


A Thousand Kisses Deep

by orea_domina



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-04
Updated: 2012-11-02
Packaged: 2017-11-11 10:39:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 25
Words: 45,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/477650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orea_domina/pseuds/orea_domina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peeta's experiences contemporary to Katniss's in Mockingjay, including more about his childhood and his father's and Katniss' mother's story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Reverie

He had no idea what had happened to Katniss, whether she was alive or dead. He missed her. He wondered if she missed him, then he put those thoughts away. He of course took her feelings into account, but he’d long ago conditioned himself to move past things he couldn’t do anything about. He’d exhausted all of his solitary confinement entertainment options. He’s slept, he’d exercised, he’d experimented with the shower options, he’d pounded the walls until he bruised and bled, he’d replayed his time in the arena (but especially the last hour) in his head a hundred million times. He’d built card houses. He’d thought of her and that night, of the beach, but the ache in his heart was not alleviated by emptying his groin in the dark.

President Snow visited him. “Would you like to know what happened to your family, Peeta?” Those words could have sounded comforting coming from another person, but they were not meant to be. They were meant to wheedle their way into his heart like parasites; to dig into soft tissue and destroy him from the inside. Snow described the bombing, in brutal detail. When he covered his ears and screamed Snow waited patiently for him to stop and then picked up where he left off. He finally just listened. Just to have it over with.

He could not help but think of them. He told himself the story of his family. So they wouldn’t be forgotten. Even if it was only by him, for whatever time he had left.

He missed his father the most. He missed his brothers and mother as well, and he never would have wished their fate on them, or anyone. But his father’s thoughtfulness, his kindness and his sensitivity had simply vanished from the world and it was a palpable loss. He knew his father had always favored him in secret. He wasn’t sure if his brothers-who took after their unintuitive mother-ever noticed. Their father had said he loved them all often enough, and he had. But it was in the quiet hours he had spent teaching Peeta to mix and color different kinds of frosting and work the tricky nuances of rare treats like marzipan or fondant that Peeta knew he was most like his father. They worked well together, understood and predicted one another’s moods and rhythms in comfortable silence. On lighter days they cracked jokes, or made note of the details of the world that the other members of their family simply didn’t see. There was not much the elder baker did not see.

He knew the story of her mother by heart, even though his father had only told it to him once. He remembered it because it was the day he met her. Katniss. He had whispered her name in the dark so many times, painted her face in his mind. It helped him sleep. He knew he had always been meant to be there for her, even if that meant giving her up, or dying for her. His father had given up Katniss’s mother once, for the same reasons. Had taken comfort in it when she was so obviously happy, with her coal miner and her daughters. She had glowed with it, and Mr. Mellark had loved her even more, still.

When the coal miner was killed, the worry lines that cobwebbed his father’s face grew deeper. His eyes got a shade or two darker, or maybe they had sunk a little deeper into his head, throwing new kinds of shadows. Only Peeta noticed. Even though at eleven he was much too big to cuddle like a small child, he sometimes curled up in a blanket on the sofa next to his father after dinner and asked for a story. His father always obliged, then sent him to bed with a kiss on top of his little blond head and a ruffle of his hair. His mother would shake her head, her hands busy darning socks or mending pants; an endless chore in a house full of males. “You baby that boy,” she had said. His father said nothing back. There was nothing he could tell her about how it was Peeta taking care of him, not the other way around.

Mrs. Mellark had always known that she was not Mr. Mellark’s first choice for a wife. Their arrangement was purely practical. He was a stable bet; she could give him children. She was efficient to a fault and she liked things a particular way. Hers. She was rigid and suspicious and petty but she was always what she appeared to be. A complete contrast to the pale, ethereal healer he never stopped loving. But his wife was also reliable and sturdy, despite her volatility. She cared enough for her family. As much as someone could who considered feelings to be a weakness in other people. Her ability to always place the blame anywhere other than on her own shoulders saved her the indignity of feeling remorse or guilt for what she did with her temper. Peeta got the most of her contempt because he wasn’t good at hiding his feelings at all at first.

Peeta didn’t know everything about his family, though.

The boy’s father had watched him fall deeper and deeper into the abyss every day. Watched him watch her. He had watched him burn valuable bread and pay the price for it at the back of his mother’s hand. Later that night he comforted his child, checked the bruise and said warm words. Snuck him a small cookie. Because Peeta was kind and selfless and brave, and he didn’t want to see that beaten out of him. Because Peeta was already devoted. The father could only hope that things would turn out differently for the son. It had been enough hope to salve his own pain sometimes, but it had also been excruciating to watch. So much heartache, between the two of them. Sometimes he felt that he had somehow passed it on, that it was something genetic. An inheritance of misery. The weakness of a friable heart. But Peeta had also inherited his mother’s solidness and reliability; her determined steadiness. And his warmth was from his heart, not from anger. Mr. Mellark had hoped maybe that would be enough to protect his son. It was a small condolence for his choices.

The baker had said nothing to Peeta about his feelings for the girl with the braid, and he had guarded the secret from the others. Nothing good would have come from them knowing. But he had spoken of Katniss and her hunting skills nonchalantly at dinner over squirrel and stale bread, when his wife was preparing for the next day or had gone to bed early. He fed Peeta any information he happened upon regarding her. How the people in town as well as the Hob had respected her father and intended to show his girl the same, if she earned it. Which she did. “She’s a fighter,” they’d say. Even before the Reaping.

Someone much too young bearing the burden of an entire family was not uncommon at all where they lived. But it was unusual for an eleven year old girl to take so much weight. She seemed so young and so reserved. No one would have blamed her for breaking, for giving up and giving in to starvation and hopelessness, but she never did. No one came to doubt her strength. He didn’t blame his son for loving her, or for helping her the one time she had come so very close to breaking. And no one could help but adore Prim, the wispy wildflower of a creature that reminded him so much of the girl he had grown up with. Of course he had helped them whenever he could. He had never wanted Katniss to feel that she was getting charity though, he knew she would have balked. And because it hadn’t been. She had earned every single small kindness he could give her, and more.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Mellark, Mrs. Everdeen and the miner who changed everything.

District 12 - Post 50th Annual Hunger Games/Second Quarter Quell

After losing Maysilee things were never the same. Although it hadn’t been his fault at all, they had hated Haymitch for coming home. Until the funerals for his family, then his girlfriend. It surprised no one when he started to drink.

Peony wasn’t as affected as Maysilee’s twin sister Ellabelle, who spent months indoors unable to function.

Peony was distracted, where she had once been warm and present. She floated off inside her head most days. No one tried to bring her back but him. She knew him, but they did not become friends until one day when he found her sitting by herself at school, her eyes fixed on something in the distance. He sat down and said nothing. She started talking. He was a good listener, he didn’t have much use for talking if there wasn’t a need. He preferred to observe. She needed an ear. She cried on his shoulder late into the night. Things were difficult at the apothecary. The whippings were becoming worse. Rumors were that Snow was not happy about something, and he had taken it out on Twelve. Some blamed Haymitch. The sudden deaths of his family indicated that he was not in good standing despite being a victor. No one saw him anymore except in the Hob looking for white liquor, or stumbling through the streets at odd hours.

….

Young Mr. Mellark was tired and not his best for work at the bakery, but he didn’t care. He was delirious at his growing closeness to her, despite her sadness. She had started to open up, to blossom again. He wanted more than her friendship, but he was gentle and patient; he thought they had time. He should have known, time was a luxury and District Twelve was nothing but poor.

The world he was building for them in his head collapsed the day she told him about the capable and charming Mr. Everdeen. How he would come in to the apothecary with the most amazing things. Herbs to make medicines no one could get from the Capitol anymore. “But he is from the Seam,” she whispered. Her parents were furious. Things moved quickly between them. She was lit from within, she glowed. It was hard to bear, to know that someone else could make her so happy. She was beautiful, his Peony. Except she was not his. Not anymore. She clearly never was.

He started to avoid her. She noticed. So he told her. He hadn’t meant to, but she looked at him with such genuine concern in her wide blue eyes. She knew she was pretty, but she had no idea how beautiful she was. It all spilled out of him. How he loved her. How long. Why. Her eyes only got wider and further away, as her concern turned slowly to pain. He said the words that had been in his heart all this time. Throwing everything he had into them. Hoping she’d hear how much he wanted to be with her and maybe want it too.

She said nothing. She only turned and went away.

He found her a few days later. Apologized. Tried to take it all back. Promised to never mention it again. But it was too late. He said he just wanted to be her friend. That was all. She sighed and said “Maybe.” But she missed his shoulder and his ear, so she tried. It was of course never the same. Those things never are.

When she told him of her engagement he wanted to die right there, wanted the earth to open up and swallow him whole. “I want you to be happy.” he said after a long silence. “I won’t fight for you, if it means you’ll be happy. Even if it means that you’ll never confide in me again, never speak to me again, never look at me again. I just want to know that this is what you really want.”

“I’m so happy.” She sobbed. “I love him so much.” She said it even though she knew it was a dagger through his heart. She had to. It was true.

He held her in his arms for the last time as she cried herself dry. It helped a little that this hadn’t been easy for her, even though it was a pinch in his heart to have caused her pain. He clutched her hands reassuringly and smiled at her, to convince her he’d be okay. Then he watched her go.

At the wedding party in the Meadow, after the toasting he couldn’t bear to go to, the new Mrs. Everdeen’s husband sang to her and every single bird stopped to listen. One by one they joined in. And it was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen, her face when that happened. No one could find him for a whole day afterwards.

His parents fixed him up with a sour-faced girl that they approved of, a girl they’d been trying to get him to see for years. “She is a good match,” they told him. “Her parents are our friends, and she is a strong, handsome girl. And you are such a strong, handsome boy.” She didn’t remind him anything of Peony, and that was good. He didn’t need a cheap imitation or the reminder. His new wife knew about Peony, apparently everyone but Peony had seen it in his face this whole time.

….

He watched the parade of wives and children and mothers and husbands receive their medals of honor and their one month compensation for the loss of their family member. She was among them, with her two daughters. He knew he might give himself away, watching her shuffle across the stage; led subtly by her elder daughter’s hand at her waist. Her other side was gripped tightly by the tiny hands of her younger daughter, the one who was nearly the spitting image of her. Her face, which had just so recently had been luminous and flushed with pink was grey and gaunt, her once-bright hair and eyes limp and dull.

Little Peeta’s eyes were fixed on Katniss, who was unable to hide the grim determination and grief on her face. She and her father had been very close, everyone knew it. She is so much like her father that one, they said. And everyone loved Mr. Everdeen. He was easy going and kind, fair in his trades and skilled at what he did. He was respected. He was mourned.

So no one’s eyes were on Mr. Mellark except his wife’s, whose lips smashed together until they disappeared, her flint eyes sparking. He’d pay for his lapse in control later. He was beyond caring. His heart, which had never fully healed from its first break, shattered again. Just as easily and just as hard.

He continued to keep an eye on her family from a distance, saw that she was not getting better. He never saw her leave the house. Her children got thinner and thinner. He was afraid that one day someone would seek them out for some reason; an unpaid tab at the market or some other thing, and find them all emaciated and cold as stone. It was not unusual.

It was Peeta who was finally brave enough to help them. Mr. Mellark was grateful, and he was proud. And more than a little ashamed of himself. He had no idea, that boy. How much he affected the people around him. He simply did what he did because it was good, because it was right. He’d accept the consequences with all the dignity he could muster, whatever they were. There was nothing but love in his soft little heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Peony: From the English word for the type of flower. It was originally believed to have healing qualities, so it was named after the Greek medical god Pæon.


	3. Snow

President Snow was in Peeta’s room. Quarters. Cell. It didn’t matter what it was called, he was clearly not free to come and go as he pleased. And this was not a social call.

“Do you know why you’re here, Mr. Mellark?” Snow said his name slowly, melodiously and with the emphasis on the ‘k’ at the end. He felt small. He was tired. Sometimes it was easy to forget that he was still technically a child. He was feeling it today.

“The refreshments?”

Actually the food hadn’t been terrible. He’d been there for only a few days at that point, but besides having no idea what was happening anywhere else, he couldn’t really complain. They hadn’t done anything remotely violent, unless you count waxing his chest hair. His prep team had been there earlier to groom him and bathe him in some kind of foul smelling goop. When they were done his skin was dewy and his hair was buffed to a high shine. It had been a few minutes before he noticed the heaviness to their careful conversation, the dark circles under their eyes, and the way they looked at one another from time to time. There was no gossipy chatter about who made what faux pas, or arguments over whether fuchsia or chartreuse really and truly was the new black. Just clinical conversation about what they were doing to him. Nothing more.

What were they prepping him for? He couldn’t imagine. A beautiful corpse to put in a coffin? Some kind of horror show? He tried to get them to talk, but the most he managed was to get them to gush almost insincerely about how well he looked. How healthy. Portia gave him her best face, but it was merely an imitation of the Portia he knew. He had wondered what could be happening to them.

“Amusing.” Snow chuckled mirthlessly. “But no. Do you know where Katniss Everdeen is, Mr. Mellark?”

“How could I? You’ve been a gracious host, but the communication and entertainment have been a bit lacking. There’s only so much a person can do with one deck of cards. And it’s missing the ace of clubs.”

“Hmmm. Well maybe we can let you watch something soon.” Peeta had no idea what that meant but he had to push the visions of Katniss and torture and the possible ‘entertainment’ Snow was capable of lining up for him out of his mind.

“Where is she?” He was trying hard to keep the mounting impatience and panic out of his voice, but it was threatening to strangle him. He wasn’t doing as well as he would like. His teeth were clenched and his mouth was dry. This was part of Snow’s game, and Peeta had never been fond of Snow’s games. He forced himself to breathe. What was his angle? He needed to think fast.

“She’s alive. Or so they tell me.” Snow shrugged. “Apparently my choices in Head Gamemakers have, of late, been leaving something to be desired. You haven’t figured it out yet? Why someone like Finnick Odair would ally himself with you? Why he brought you back to life when he could have left you dead and been one tribute closer to winning? Why so many victors would sacrifice themselves to keep you alive?”

“I have some theories.” He had had time to think about it. Snow’s confirmation that Plutarch had betrayed the Capitol gelled with what already he suspected. That he and Katniss had been used. The only thing he wasn’t sure of was by whom exactly, and how extensive the conspiracy was.

“I’m sure you do. Well. Let me fill you in. Panem is a tricky organism, Mr. Mellark. Governing it is a balancing act that requires a certain set of morals and skills. I have them, and I use them. I don’t particularly enjoy taking lives, especially those of children, but it’s a price that must be paid to keep the districts from repeating our unfortunate history. I am constantly tending to the delicate balance between hope and fear. And your Miss Everdeen has tipped that balance. She has given people more hope than they need. It’s misguided and suicidal. That balance must be restored.”

“What do you want from me?” He could feel his eyes narrowing with impatience.

“I want you to do what you do best. I want you to persuade your girlfriend and the rebels pulling her strings to agree to a cease fire. Are you familiar with the term ‘mutually assured destruction’ Mr. Mellark?”

“It’s a term from before the Dark Days. Nuclear deterrents were used by the old governments to keep one another in line. There’s no advantage in everyone being dead.”

“Exactly. Do you know what happened to District Thirteen? Do you know what their true export was?”

“No.” He was getting a good idea.

“Weapons technology. You’re a smart boy. Do you think we could just blow up Thirteen without consequence? No. We were forced to sign a non-aggression pact. An agreement that they would not use unthinkable force, and we would leave them alone. Well, that unthinkable force still exists. So do the people. They simply retreated underground. No nuclear facility exists without some protection. Theirs is quite extensive and mostly self-sufficient. That is where your star-crossed lover is, my boy.” Snow said the word ‘lover’ with enough venom and contempt to poison a small army. “Her little stunts -as well as your own,” he points out, “don’t think I don’t give you credit- have… emboldened Thirteen’s leaders to action. Against the entire country. She is to be the new face of the so-called revolution. Let me ask you, how do you think this will all end? Do you really think they’re strong enough to win? Do you think there won’t be terrible consequences? A war would decimate the population. And not just in the literal sense of the word. Much more than 10% of humanity would be gone. Wiped out. The losses would be catastrophic for our species.”

He has a point, Peeta thought. Peeta was never a fan of violence, especially to achieve an end. He preferred diplomatic solutions and talking his way out of problems. Hopelessness threatened to fill him up. He considered what humans had done to the planet and each other even under the most prosperous circumstances. Maybe we don’t deserve to survive, he thought.

Snow’s voice quickened and raised a few decibels from firm and compelling to almost unhinged, snapping him out of his ruminations. “Do you think that she is safe? She isn’t. Do you think that we don’t know where she is? We do. Do you think that we don’t have the means to destroy Thirteen once and for all? We’ve had seventy-five years to think of one. The only way for you to assure that she stays safe and alive is for you to get them to lay down their weapons and agree to surrender. Unconditionally, if possible.”

Peeta looked at him, pieces falling into place. This explained his prep.

Snow stood, smoothed the lapel of his suit and straightened his rose, his voice returning to its preternatural calm. “Did you enjoy your prep treatments? You look positively glowing.” he smiled his puffy smile and it drained all the warmth from the room. “It’s a good thing. You’re about to be reunited with an old friend.”

As the Peacekeepers led him out of the mansion he considered Snow’s words. The threat was clear. He needed to sell the idea of disarming to an organized secret rebel force or Thirteen was gone. And he had to sell this idea to Katniss and Gale and others who had been gearing up for this fight their entire lives. Probably Haymitch as well. No one else could have arranged the alliances. And how involved was Effie? She had suggested and designed the jewelry that indicated membership in the alliance.

He did his best. Caesar Flickerman was his reliable over-the-top self, more than willing to pick up on unspoken cues, to steer a conversation to its necessary end without having colluded with the interviewee. It was a gift. It was no wonder he’d kept his job all this time. He was bright and entertaining, but underneath was a man probably under threat just like any other higher up in the Capitol world. Entertain or die. And yet Caesar always seemed to be able to both keep his life and keep tributes sympathetic to the people he was presenting them to. They were all lambs for the slaughter. Did Caesar see them that way? It had certainly taken its toll on Haymitch, how could it not affect the others whose job it was to shine them up and hold them still while the Capitol slit their throats? What did Effie really hide behind all that artifice and punctuality? Cinna all but announced himself in his personal restraint, his purposeful lack of affectation.

The interview went as well as he could have hoped. And he hoped a lot. It was so painful to imagine looking into her eyes, but he did the best he could. It was not hard to say the words themselves; he abhorred war. He hated violence. The thing that was hard was what was always the hardest. To make her see. And more importantly, to make her believe.

The Peacekeepers who took him away from Caesar Flickerman’s set did not return him up into the part of the mansion where he had previously been held, but down a long flight of stairs that ended in a cavernous tiled, windowless underground room. It was not exactly a new room, only new to him. It had obviously seen a lot of use. On the far side were a set of open cells arranged in an almost complete semi-circle. Each cell had a hose running from the ceiling, and a drain in the middle of the floor. The floor sloped down toward the drain. There were no furnishings that he could see, but the light was bad. A single unlit lightbulb hung over the top of each cell, and every cell was covered with iron lattice that also extended down the front, providing a clear view of the center of the circle. In that center was a variety of equipment. That was where his mind shut down. He was in shock by the time they reached his cell.

He had been alone before, but here he was not alone. Here he had friends. Real friends. He would soon long for the easy days of building card houses and having the privacy and will to clean himself and relieve his body’s pent up frustrations.

Later (he didn’t know how much later) when he was secured in his cell and his restraints checked and double checked and he was beaten for good measure, he heard them. It was dark, but he heard them. Some were just whimpers, some were words, some were periodic piercing screams. Some made sense, most did not. One was perfectly clear.

“I was wondering when you’d have the decency to show up,” said the ragged voice from the cell next to him. He recognized it immediately, it could belong to no one else.

“Hey Johanna,” he grunted, nursing his bruised ribs. “Thanks for inviting me to the party.”


	4. Iris

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “When they ran out of questions Johanna would answer or she lost her voice, they brought in the tank and the battery banks. Her voiceless screams were the worst. Almost as bad as the Avoxes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Rated V for violence, y’all.

At first he didn’t sleep, he passed out. He wasn’t sure what they did to him when he was out. Sometimes he was chained to the wall, sometimes they leave him lying on the tile where he fell.

No one ever got a break. There was always someone somewhere in the circle being actively ‘worked on.’ Sometimes they drag someone out into the center, or The Theater, as their torturers called it. It was called that not only because every prisoner with sight could see it from the circle, but because Snow sold tickets for the show. It took him awhile to notice the windows, but they were there. Some were just thin slits between the tiles, some were large and covered with glass. Sometimes there was an MC for the show. Sometimes not. Sometimes there was a new person in on an interrogation. They could usually tell the clients by the lecherousness in their eyes. And the shoes. They never wore practical enough shoes for the mess. Sometimes the careful and expensive looking hair or the makeup tipped them off. Or the nerves. Sometimes there was crying and he and Johanna wondered who had paid for those sessions. Someone watching, probably. There was always an unseen layer of complication. He couldn’t care less, except that it kept his mind occupied.

In the wall that separated him from Johanna was a crack just big enough to carry sound but not big enough to notice if you weren’t looking for it. He wasn’t sure if his hosts knew about it or if they had put it there on purpose, to give them comfort and hope just so they could take it away again. Every day he was sure someone would come in and plaster it up. But they didn’t. He and Johanna were careful not to draw attention to themselves when they talked, but they really had no reason to believe they weren’t being observed. When no one punished them for it, they didn’t stop.

The Director of The Theater had no name, but he and Johanna took to calling him Veins. Mostly because he insisted they call him The Director. But also because his thin ruddy skin was threaded with obscene blue bulges.

They never did lasting physical damage (they didn’t consider scars to be damage, unfortunately) to any of the permanent residents: himself, Johanna, or Annie. He had a full view of Annie, she was in the cell directly across from him. They didn’t have to do much to her mind that wasn’t already done. She was catatonic most of the time, whoever she still was locked away in a place where she couldn’t process what was happening to her and around her. She rocked limply against the wall, loosely shackled hands clamped over her ears, naked. Tubes kept her alive, but only just. The blood running down her thighs contrasted beautifully against her alabaster skin, he thought. The drips formed shapes reminiscent of the coral they saw in 4 on the Victory Tour. Where she was from. It was a detail only a painter would see, the beauty in the horror.

Ennobaria had been there at first, but she was only with them for a few short days (estimated, they guessed about time; there was no real way to track it). Someone very client-like of indeterminate gender arrived who led her away as if she were a piece of property. Recognition registered in her eyes, but there was something odd about the relationship. Not quite familiar. She looked back at them as she was being led away, he couldn’t tell if she was sorry for them or for herself.

Sometimes when they came to they had splints, casts or bandages and nano-salve had been applied. The salve healed their wounds, but it didn’t contain any painkillers, like the kind Katniss received from Haymitch for her burns during the first Games. They felt every tiny bite and stitch of the microscopic bugs who repaired and patched up their broken bodies. A nano-injection for a broken bone was particularly horrible. They were constantly being broken, repaired, then broken again. It was tiresome.

When they ran out of questions Johanna would answer or she lost her voice, they brought in the tank and the battery banks. Her voiceless screams were the worst. Almost as bad as the Avoxes.

It was Veins himself who brought Darius and Livinia out of their cells. Livinia went quickly. They hadn’t meant to kill her, but someone miscalculated the voltage. He never saw that tech again.

Peeta had not been friendly with Darius because he was a Peacemaker, but also because Darius preferred to “patrol” the Hob. Peeta never spent much time in the Hob. But he knew him from Gale’s whipping. Knew he was a decent human being who had been fond of Katniss and had looked out for her when he could. And he knew him from Darius’s time as their Avox at the training center. It had taken him a few minutes to place him, when he noticed Katniss and Haymitch’s reactions. And Effie of course didn’t know him. He was pretty sure Haymitch hadn’t told her. For all Haymitch’s jabs at Effie, he protected her from the worst of what she didn’t know. He’d heard them fighting one time, Effie upset that Haymitch hadn’t told her something. “You can’t keep everything painful or unpleasant from me, Haymitch! I’m not an idiot _or_  a monster.” She had stomped out and nearly run him over in the hallway, huffing as she guessed he’d overheard them. “Well, he can’t!” She had exclaimed, exasperated. “You tell him I said that. And it’s not polite to eavesdrop!” She had snapped. The staccato of her heels echoed off into the distance.  _No one stomps in heels quite like Effie,_  he remembered thinking.

They took Darius’s fingers first. Then his toes. Then his eyes, his ears, his nose and his genitals. Over days. Or years. No way to tell. He made an awful sound that started with the purse of his lips, like a P or a B. He thinks it was his name. When Darius was bleeding too much, they’d cauterize his wounds with an electric current. It was the same zapping sound that now came from Johanna’s cell when they used the tank. It had been his first experience with having his eyes forcibly held open. He knew he’d never take blinking for granted ever again.

He learned to tell Johanna’s moods by the kinds of screams she’d make. She was usually angry and defiant, but occasionally she’d whimper like a small child or emit a terrifying sound that was both an insane cackle and a sob. He learned to tell Annie’s from how quiet she was. Annie didn’t scream, usually. Unless there was a sound to drown out. More often than screaming she would rock back and forth and sing to herself. Sometimes when she was lucid, when they left her alone long enough she would float back up to reality to bob on the surface with them for awhile. She whispered things to him. Her life in words, but not in any order he recognized. It was a useful distraction, to put together the pieces of her life in his head. He thought he might fall in love with Finnick himself after a while.

When Johanna was unable to take any more stimulus and Annie’s whispers were too much for her, she would tell Annie to shut up. Annie would retreat quickly, both physically and mentally. He would tell Johanna she was being cruel. Usually she would just scoff. One time though, she sobbed, “I know, Peeta. I know. It’s the only thing I’m good at.” Later when she thought he was asleep he heard her whisper something to Annie. “I’m sorry, Annie.” She said. “I’m so sorry.” She said it over and over again for a long time. She only stopped when Annie whispered back.

“Okay, Johanna.” She had reached out her hand through the bars for Johanna even though it was much too far to touch. Forgiving was what Annie was good at. Not as good as she liked at forgetting, but she never held grudges.

Later Johanna threatened to kill them both if they ever repeated what had happened. He pretended to not have any idea what she was talking about.

Eventually he learned to sleep in shackles. He learned to turn off everything important and go to a place in his head. Annie taught them how on one of her lucid days. He learned to stop crying, to stop giving them satisfaction. Depending on who was on shift that day, it earned him some respect. Sometimes it made things worse. But he couldn’t turn the tears back on once he shut them off. For a very long time. Not even when he thought about home or his family or Katniss.


	5. ancient history

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Peeta and Johanna try to survive. (revised)

A/N: Movie Johanna made me change some things. MADE me. She does that.

 

* * *

 

There was no sense of time anymore. They gave up trying to track it. The pain was endless; there wasn't even the hope that it would fade. He knew nothing, so there was nothing he could tell them. But there was nothing else to do with him, he supposed, but break him. He passed in and out of consciousness. When he was conscious he tried to sleep, but when he slept he woke up screaming. He stopped trying that as well.

****

He and Johanna fought hard to keep their minds from slipping. They tried to remember everything they could about home. Usually he chose something he wanted to remember, like his father or the Meadow or what it was like to paint, or to sleep with Katniss on the train. Johanna didn't even laugh at him for that. She told him about District 7, about the smell of the woods, about the benefits of independence.

****

"Why did you have to take care of yourself?" Peeta asked her.

****

"I just did. Okay?" She snapped.

****

"Look, Johanna. We're tired, we've got broken bones and we're probably going to die here. There's only one person I would wish to see right now if I could. But she's not here, we are. Come on. I'm your friend."

****

"I don't want to talk about it." She said.

****

"Okay." He put his head on the tile floor, right next to the crack in the wall. "I'll be on the beach if you need me."

****

She laughs. "Ugh. The beach again, loverboy? You have fun with that. I mean with her." Her tone is mocking but it lacks conviction. "I'll be in the forest, on a nice soft moss bed, with a whole day's worth of hot food."

****

It was a joke, but it wasn't. Everyone had their happy place.

****

Awhile later she sighed and whistled through the wall. It was their signal. "Peeta?"

****

"Mmmmm. What?"

****

"Are you asleep?"

****

"Yeah brainless, I'm asleep." He mimicked her snark. Silence. Too far, he groaned inwardly. He was about to apologize when she spoke.

****

"I killed my father." She said matter of factly, like she was describing what kind of toothpaste she used to use.

****

It shocked him, and he was lying on the floor of a torture chamber. He didn't know how to respond.

****

"He was beating my mother. Smashed open her head with an empty bottle while me and my brothers and sisters hid. He ran out of shit to drink and he blamed her. There was blood everywhere, she was all limp and bleeding on the floor. I was ten. I tried to wake her up. He started crying. Going on and on. He thought she was dead. 'What have I done, what have I done, blah blah blah...' He was worried about his own ass. That the Peacekeepers would show up and he'd be strung up or shot before sunset the next day. I finally understood that she wasn't going to wake up and I didn't know if she would. He was pacing, trying to work out his next move. He forgot about us completely, he was a self-absorbed asshole who never really noticed us except to knock us around anyway. Except for my middle sister. She was his doll, his darling. But that wasn’t her fault, I guess. She was just born like him.” Her words were empty, hollow, but like a reed in the wind. Haunted. Heartbreaking. Dead. “He knew we were there. I could see his mind work his way around to us. He knew we had seen everything. I was just so fucking tired of it. He moved toward us and I got angry, I didn’t even think. I stuck a knife in his chest. Looked him right in his stupid lazy eyes." She laughed, and it was not the quiet conspiratorial laughter from before. It was a howl; raw and bare.

****

He heard several people stir, but no one said anything. He picked up his head; he could just make out Annie's hands clamped over her ears. "The Peacekeepers showed up. I told them he fell on the knife. They didn't even question me after they got a look at my mother. I put the kids to bed even though it was the middle of the day. I didn’t know what else to do. I helped her stitch her head back together and clean herself up but things were never the same. She hated me for what I did." Her voice was small and tired and laced with years of bitterness. "She loved him. More than she loved us, I think. My smallest sister had come out of her bed and was holding onto my mother like… I don’t know what it was like. Clamped around her waist. Wouldn’t let go. And my mother looked down at her, and looked at me, straight in the eye as she said to my sister ‘You’re the only one who loves me.’"

****

He was familiar with having a mother whose needs superseded her children's. More than familiar. He thought about Gale, at the whipping post, how he’d known the sound of a whipping before he could even think about it. He hadn't quite decided what to say about that when she went on.

****

"I took care of the kids. I endured her looks and the days she couldn’t get out of bed. She tried, I guess. She tried and failed. We spent a lot of time in the woods. Away from the stinking house and her moods and her men. Then I got Reaped, and I had to leave them. I knew how to play dumb and helpless from being around my father. He'd leave us alone if I didn't fight him, if I sniveled and pretended I couldn't fight. But sometimes I had to draw his attention away from the kids. They were so little… they couldn’t take it like I could.” She was ten. Ten, when she killed her father. His bones cracked and ached as he lay there, in the places where he’d felt his mother’s wrath. “When I got back my mother was gone, the kids were alone, and Snow wanted me to go into the Roster. I said no. They needed me."

****

"Where did she go? Your mother?" He asked.

****

"I don't know. No one would tell me. She had just disappeared." Her voice was remote, even for coming through the wall. "Probably sold herself enough to get money to bribe someone to get her to another district. I took care of my family, until Snow took them all. Except one. My littlest sister. She took herself.” She stopped talking, for a long while. He thought he could hear her breathing, so he didn’t push. Then she started again, her voice filled with terrible Johanna rage. “He killed my grandmother. Anyone I knew or cared even the slightest bit about. Old boyfriends. My best friend. Anyone."

****

"What's… what’s the Roster?" He asked quietly, even though he thought he already knew, through the quiet anger burning inside him. He couldn’t bear to ask how many siblings she had. He knew it was at least three or four. Two sisters, and she had said “brothers and sisters.” Snow was no stranger to killing children, he didn’t know why it surprised him. But it explained why she pushed everyone away so hard. She and Haymitch had it down to an art. And now he knew why she pushed Katniss the way she did. She knew. The three of them were truly of the same breed. Survivors. Victors. Rebels. Victims.  

****

She paused. "It's a list. Of victors. And the 'services' they offer. During the annual trip to the Capitol for the Games. Shiny young pretty things."

****

He was stunned. But if Snow would sell tickets to watch someone cut parts off of Darius, he could most certainly pimp out Johanna. "Who else..." He swallowed against the bile rising in his throat. "Who else is on the list?"

****

He could hear the shrug in her voice. "I don't know all of them. Finnick for sure. Popular with the ladies. Ennobaria. Puts on quite a show with live wild cats, I hear. Well, they start out live. She rips their throats out with her teeth. And then...," she stops. Which is fine. He doesn't want to know what else happens after that. She clears her scratchy throat. "Gloss. Blight. Cashmere. Everyone, I guess. Everyone anyone wanted. Nuts and Volts were obviously not on the roster. The morphlings were on for awhile but they lost all their lustre and people stopped paying. No one wanted to become the next Haymitch. Except me. I’d much rather be a professional lush. I didn't care. I had no one to care about. Like I said, there’s no one left that I love. I’m not like the rest of you. I told him he was going to have to kill me."

****

"What happened?"

****

"He tried to kill me." She said. "Obviously it didn't work. But he kept trying and I came around eventually. His methods can be persuasive. As you can see by our current luxury accommodations. You and Katniss would have made quite a lot of money. If it hadn't been for the Quell." She pauses for a long while. "I'm sorry. About Katniss. I'm sorry I couldn't help you. When I cut out her tracker, she had no idea what I was doing. She nearly took me out when she thought I'd turned on her. On you. She's loyal, but she's so dense sometimes." She chuckles with much less hysteria than last time. “So fucking dense.”

****

There was no humor in his voice when he laughed. "She can be both." He paused, his heart rose painfully in his throat. Johanna would give him shit but he said it anyway. "I miss her."

****

"I know. You want to know what's crazy? I kind of do, too. Now let's stop playing and go to sleep."

 

* * *

 

Snow visited from time to time, never for very long. "Have you broken him yet?" He'd ask.

****

"Not yet, sir." Veins would answer. "We will."

****

"I don't know about that." Snow would reply, and then he'd walk off with Veins to the far side of the room, the place with the medical facility and the white cube. He didn't visit very often. But today is special. Today he stayed.

****

"Hello, Mr. Mellark. You look well."

****

Peeta glared at him with all the furious exhaustion he could muster. Someone brought Snow a metal chair. It scraped on the floor and echoed through the whole chamber. He sat down, leaning forward on his cane. Snow regarded him curiously, as if he were something new he'd never seen before. He wasn't. What he was was suspicious and resentful.

****

"We need to have a talk about Miss Everdeen."

****

He felt a needle sting his arm.

****

“What are you giving me?” He asked.

****

“Just a little painkiller. You’re going back on TV and I need you relatively functional. Your star-crossed lover and her friend,” his implication was clear and cruel; that she and Gale were together now, “just blew some of my hovercraft out of the sky with nothing more than a bow and arrow.”

****

“She is a pretty good shot.” He tried not to smile to himself. He would pay for it in orders of magnitude later. But he couldn’t help it.

****

“Be that as it may, she’s whipping up the rebels into a rabid frenzy. They have some kind of tech expert breaking into my broadcasts. Beetee, I’d guess. They have slogans and a logo, the whole works. Plutarch has really outdone himself. So, it seems your previous efforts were... insufficient to convince them. I need you to understand this, Peeta Mellark. This war is not going to end well, no matter the outcome. Does Katniss really believe that the people she’s working for are well-intentioned? They’ve been angling for this for years. This is not something that sprung up overnight. She was merely the spark that allowed them to burn this country to the ground. This little rebellion has to end. Do you know what’s going to be left once this is over? Nothing. Nothing except ashes and bones. Will the new regime be any kinder? Does she really know who she is dealing with? Because I don’t think she does. Plutarch is a Gamemaker and this is just another game for him. You two are nothing but pawns. Think about it. You have a few hours. You really won’t like what happens next if you fail. And, I’m afraid, neither will she.”

****

Snow stood and paused, cold venom spitting from his eyes. "Convince her."

****

He tried. He tried very hard.


	6. Hijacked

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Everything flew out of time. It was different than losing track of time, everything literally jumped and fuzzed and spit and folded back on itself, a klein bottle of experience that stretched and squeezed his mind.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This story assumes that Katniss and Peeta had some naughty time alone on the train and in Katniss’s room in the training center. Private, sweet memories that Peeta would have clung to.

Buzzing.

It was the first thing he heard. He struggled. His arms were strapped down. His legs. His head. Restraints held him to a flat board in front of a video screen. The room was white. Glowing. Someone had scrubbed the grime and blood from his body, leaving bright welts and bruises in various stages of flower.

Buzzing. He heard it before he saw it. He saw it before he felt it.

Everything flew out of time. It was different than losing track of time, everything literally jumped and fuzzed and spit and folded back on itself, a klein bottle of experience that stretched and squeezed his mind.

 _Katniss._  He clung to the feeling of her. The memory of her body next to his, the feel of her lips on his, her hips beneath him, naked, soft, yielding, sweet. She was solid, she was real, he could make her real. He thrust into her in his mind, in his heart.  _Katniss._  Her name conjured up everything he loved.

She appeared before him, she kissed him in the dark, in the cave. She kissed him and kissed him and kissed him and then her face changed when the he-out-of-himself fell asleep and she transformed into a terrifying creature with a shimmering lamprey for a mouth, a succubus stealing the life out of him, little by little by little, while he slept, until he was gone. Lies. It was all lies. All of it. Even the kisses.

 _NO!_  Not all of it. He shook himself out of it.

That’s not how it happened. That’s not what happened. What was happening? He tried to cling to what he knew, the memories he held close to him in the dark when nothing else could hurt him more than he was already hurting. But terror sprung from that ancient well where there were only two choices to survive. He had been helpless, asleep! He couldn’t do anything while she sucked his life away. He was at her mercy. The sheer size of the feeling overwhelmed everything. What if that was what happened? He was looking at it, it was happening. Why did it feel wrong? He lost the ability to care as he fell underneath the avalanche of terror, a small creature unable to fight or fly.

He forced himself to breathe. He was seeing her again. She was screeching in triumph, his blood dripping from the circular rows of teeth she used to devour him. The terror engulfed him, but he couldn’t stop watching. More and more and more he saw. He couldn’t close his eyes. He couldn’t move. He couldn’t breathe. Everything happened. Everything was happening. He understood nothing, and everything. He hurt. He hurt so badly.

Some moments he felt real again. His head cleared, he remembered things. He tried and tried to remember what he didn’t want to forget. Her face. Her face making words. Saying his name. “Peeta.” She pleaded for him, she held his hand. “Peeta… stay with me.” Her lips were petals, her tongue soft and searching, her eyes bright steel vapor. “Peeta…” He wanted to say something back to her, but he couldn’t find the word he knew. “Peeta!” Her hand held his tightly. “Peeta.” Too tightly, as her voice dropped an octave. Her lips curled over sharp teeth. A low growl rumbled from her chest.

He was losing her. He didn’t want to lose her. He tried to cry, but he had no tears. Ragged soundless sobs broke him bit by bit until he couldn’t breathe and he lost the world to darkness again.

* * *

When he woke he was being prepped. If his team noticed him regain consciousness, they indicated nothing. They were busy bemoaning the difficult task at hand. Him. His skin was beyond hope, they said. He’d lost so much weight, how were they supposed to find clothes to hide that? And his cheeks, his prominent jaw that they used to fawn over only emphasized the hollowness. His hair was so dull, and look, it was falling out in whole clumps when they brushed it. Someone get the kit. He could hear more than feel his artificial leg twitching on the table. The biomech was damaged, they said. He’d become so accustomed to pain that any minor discomfort they may have been causing him didn’t even register. It was Snow’s voice that had awoken him.

“…if there is no response launch the bunker busters. Most survivors will likely be trapped underground, cut off from resources. By tomorrow morning District Thirteen and their troublesome Mockingjay will all be dead or as good as. There will be much work to do to regain the districts once it is done. Make sure to notify all the necessary people.” Dead. Dead by morning. She would be dead. Thirteen. Gone. Dead by morning. The words repeated over and over in his head. Why did he need to remember them? Mockingjay.  _Katniss._ Katniss! He had to warn her somehow. He had to remember, to warn her.

“Yes sir.” A voice responded. “And the boy?”

“Medical says he is slightly confused but perfectly functional. He should be lucid. The first dose of serum has been out of his system for a full day now. All he has to do is read the script and make the arguments. I’ll remind him of his motivations.”

“Of course sir.”

“Get everything ready.” Snow said. His voice was getting closer. Footsteps approached.  _Remember,_ he told himself. _Remember to warn her!_

“Wake him.” Snow ordered. Someone shoved a bitter smelling packet under his nose. He didn’t have to pretend to gag at the smell.

* * *

> “Katniss…how do you think this will end? What will be left? No one is safe. Not in the Capitol. Not in the districts. And you…in Thirteen…” he inhales sharply, as if fighting for air; his eyes look insane. “Dead by morning!”
> 
> Off camera, Snow orders, “End it!” -Suzanne Collins, Mockingjay

* * *

As his head hit the floor, droplets of blood bloomed like a hundred poppies on the white field of tile, only to be trampled under the tangle of harsh black boots. He cried out, for the loss of the little flowers, from struggling to remember who he was, to latch onto and hold any identity he could find. He couldn’t. He found the place where the pain was rooted and focused hard. Everything else faded to black. Then everything just faded.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: In mathematics, the Klein bottle ( /ˈklaɪn/) is a non-orientable surface, informally, a surface (a two-dimensional manifold) in which notions of left and right cannot be consistently defined. It looks like a gourd trying to eat itself, basically.


	7. Delivery

His purpose is clear now. Everything is clear now. He sees what she really is. They have made him see. And they made her, they should know. Those are his thoughts as he smells something strange and he drifts off to sleep. Peacefully, for once.

…

He wakes up. He's not strapped down. He's not in the cube. People are running and yelling and this place is not familiar to him at all. Someone in a white coat arrives and tells him he's safe. Safe from what? He asks. The Capitol, they tell him. He's in Thirteen.  _Thirteen!_  They had survived! He survived and they survived. Part of him is elated and then he remembers. Is she here? He has to know. He asks.

Soon, they tell him. Soon she will be there. They smile. He smiles back. She has fooled them too. He waits while they poke and probe him, test this and that. He is bristling with impatience, when he sees her. Her face is contorted, she is running towards him. He will have only this one opportunity. Her arms reach for him, but he gets to her first. His hands wrap around her neck, he feels her deceptively delicate windpipe under his thumbs and he pushes them in hard. But before he can feel the satisfying crush and snap he needs, stars explode in front of his eyes and then nothing.

…

When he wakes up he is restrained. It's such a familiar feeling now it's comforting. To have loose limbs would make him feel out of control. His artificial leg has stopped twitching. Someone must have fixed it. His hands have not. No fixing them, he figures.

…

He hears the term for the first time.  _Hijacked._ That's what he is. That's what he has been. What has been done to him. That's what they explain to him, as if he is a child. His mind has been...altered. He doesn't remember everything, and there are bad things. His body hurts. They're repairing his body. They think they need to repair his mind. But he's sure of three things.

Katniss Everdeen betrayed him, and everyone he loves. He has failed to kill her. He needs to kill her.

…

He shouldn't want to kill her. He loves her. He loved her. They tell him he did. They show him the tapes of them being...in love. It only makes him angry. She had made him believe she was his friend. On his side. The whole time she wanted to kill him. It was her mission. She isn't even human. Something bothers him though. He wonders when they took the real Katniss and replaced her with the mutt. When they took the girl he loved and put this in her place. Had she always been this thing? It's impossible to tell. No one believes him, so no one can answer the question. Snow would know. Why hadn't Snow told him? Snow told him so many things.

…

She is human. They tell him this, but he doesn't believe them. She's fooled everyone. He has been played for a fool.

…

Since he tried to strangle her, he doesn't see anyone that he knows. Only strangers. Then Delly visits him. She's nice. She reminds him of home. He misses home. He can't go back, it's gone. He gets angry sometimes. When he can't remember, when he doesn't know, or when they tell him something that isn't true. He makes Delly cry, a few times. He feels awful about it; it's not Delly's fault. He makes himself remember she's lost her home too.

Haymitch visits him. He is definitely angry with  _him._

"Hello Peeta." Haymitch hardly ever uses his name. Usually he is 'boy' or... well, just 'boy,' actually. Haymitch looks at him and kicks at something on the floor. Peeta glares at him.

"Haymitch."

"How are you feeling?"

"Pretty lousy, actually."

"I'm sure." Haymitch is being awkward. It angers him that he is forcing him to ask the question.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because the less you knew the better. Because we were trying to protect you."

"The same reasons you and Katniss didn't tell me anything you were doing until the Victory Tour.  _That_  kind of protection? The kind you promised you wouldn't subject me to anymore?" His hands are shaking uncontrollably.

"Maybe I should come back later." Haymitch is talking to him like he is fragile, or a child. He doesn't feel either, right now. He feels ancient and angry.

"No! I want you to answer me. I want you to tell me why you hid the fact that you were  _planning a revolution_  from me? And that Katniss and I were front and center as pawns in this stupid game of yours?"

"It wasn't quite like that. We didn't know you would get separated or we would have rescued you both. There wasn't anything we could do, we had to make a split decision." There's something about the way Haymitch is looking at him. It's probably because he's talking about Katniss as if she were not what she is. He had slipped back to his old assumptions without realizing it. He backtracks.

"You chose to rescue the mutt instead? Why?"

Haymitch regards him coldly. "You know why." He indicates the long scratches on his face. "And  _that_   _mutt_  tried to take me out with her bare hands when she learned that you had been taken by the Capitol. When she found out that I had personally failed you both. That  _mutt_ ," he says quietly, "cares about you."

Haymitch doesn't wait for him to say anything else. He gives him a look that could be pity or disappointment, and he shakes his head as he goes.

…

Prim visits him. It's hard to be angry with her.

…

He asks about Johanna and Annie. He hadn't seen them, really, since before he was hijacked (that he remembers). They almost always took him back to his cell when they were done with him, he thinks. But the levels of venom in his system had been too high for him to ever process anything rationally, one of the doctors tells him. He has vague nightmares about cold floors that fold in on him and swinging lamps that turn into snakes. But he doesn't remember hearing their voices. Or seeing them. It was like all of his sensory memories from those times were wrapped up in gauze. He couldn't make sense of anything through it. Except maybe one voice, and it's impossible to tell whose it is. It could be from inside his head, for all he knows.

"Stay," it said. "Please stay."

…

He remembers a song. The Hanging Tree, it's called. He remembers all of the words. It's a strange song. At first he doesn't remember how he knows them, but then he remembers Mr. Everdeen coming in to the bakery; singing it for them. All the birds stopped to listen, just like his father said.

…

Annie says she is getting married. He is happy for her. She seems so happy. She vibrates with joy. She asks him very quietly, then puts her hands over her mouth as if to keep a beautiful happy secret, if he would make her and Finnick a cake.

At first they don't let him use any utensils. Only his fingers. Which is just as well. He asks for a paper and some paint to practice. They give him some. He paints with his fingers, waves on the ocean, a boat, the sky, a small bird. The bird says that they may be a small boat on a voyage in the vast and terrible sea, but they are always near land. Always within reach. They are not alone.

It feels good to paint again. He feels almost calm. He can control his hands much better now, unless he is under stress. When he is stressed they flail and tap and flutter around, consumed with their own motives, dispersing his excess energy. He works on the cake for days. They allow him one person from the cook staff to take direction on the mixing and baking and coloring. He feels proud of it. He hopes they like it. He hopes it makes them happy.


	8. Reunion

….

He asks Haymitch if he can see her. He doesn't know why exactly. He's feeling better. Able to handle more things. And he needs to prove that she's real. He trusts nothing in his head anymore, he needs things to be in front of him. Everything must prove its existence to him. Even himself. But especially her.

She opens the door. He is restrained. He is still a threat to her. They tell him she is no threat to him. He has trouble believing that. The tiniest part of him that is her staunch defender doesn't. It's confusing, to be a compartmentalized human being.

She is smaller in person than she is in his mind. She is tired, her face is not how he remembers it. It's neither heart-stoppingly frightening or staggeringly beautiful. It's closed off. Unreadable.

"Hey." She says. For a second she looks nervous.

"Hey." he replies. He tries to match her tone, trying to sound...not fucked up. But he is. If she really is here to kill him, it's best not to let her know he's on to her. He suspects he's not doing a fantastic job. He feels raw and exposed.

"Haymitch said you wanted to talk to me."

"Look at you, for starters." Verify her existence. She is real. She is the real Katniss Everdeen. Beyond that he has no idea. He waits for something to happen. Anything. For Mutt Katniss to make her appearance. Should he provoke her? Will that work? He tries it. "You're not very big, are you? Or particularly pretty?" Her eyes flash. Anger. He knows her anger, but it's the familiar kind. Hurt flashes briefly. Can she be hurt? Is it a trick? To get him to sympathize with her?

"Well, you've looked better." She says.

That stings. It stings him in a place he doesn't remember. He also feels gratified. This is cruelty, this is mutt behavior. She knows what he's endured. Surely even if no one has told her she knows at the very least what she can see on his body. The scars. The wounds that haven't healed yet. Heartless. She is heartless.

"And not even remotely nice, to say that to me after all I've been through." Rage is rising in his belly. He's feeling entitled to be a little selfish, a little self-centered right now.

"Yeah, we've all been through a lot." She says, eyeing him. "And you're the one who was known for being nice, not me." She pauses for a long moment, looking down. Her face blanches. "Look, I don't feel so well. Maybe I'll drop by tomorrow." She's running. She always runs.

Tiny Peeta raises all the tiny alarms he can muster. Shoves something up that cuts through all the angry static.  _You're losing her. Again._ Tiny Peeta screams.  _Remember the bread._ He almost dismisses the small voice, when a flood of memory sweeps him out of the moment. A nebula of warmth blooms in his chest.

It was so long ago. They were so young. But he remembers it all suddenly, and so clearly. He'd seen her at school, after her father died, after the medal ceremony. She'd been getting thinner and thinner. It had hurt him, to watch her. He remembers that. He had wished there was something he could do. One day she appeared on the back steps of the bakery, looking through the garbage. For food. His mother chased her away with some horrible words. She was good at those. She'd had some for him, later. He pretended to be distracted. His hand slipped over the fire in the oven, and two loaves of bread toppled in. He pulled them out quickly, but their crusts were scorched. Not enough to affect anything but the appearance. But appearance was everything when it came to selling bread. So his mother called him names, and hit him. She told him to feed it to the pigs. By the time he got to the back door, she was already slumped down against the apple tree. He took one last look back to see if his mother was hovering, almost didn't care if she was, and then he tossed her the bread. He didn't wait because he didn't want her to feel self-conscious, but he did peek out the window to make sure she had them. He saw her stuff them under her sweater and go, as fast as her hunger weakened body had allowed. He felt the welt on his cheek.  _It had been worth it,_  he had thought. He had hoarded a small smile and the warm feeling in his belly knowing she would be safe from starvation for a few days. He remembers after, too. At school. The dandelion.

The words just leave his body. He doesn't know where they are coming from, he doesn't have the energy to care.

"Katniss." He says her name without any anger for the first time since he was hijacked. "I remember about the bread." She stops dead in her tracks, her hand on the doorknob.

She turns around slowly. "They showed you the tape of me talking about it." She says. She sounds sad. Why was there a tape?

"No. Is there a tape of you talking about it? Why didn't the Capitol use it against me?"

"I made it the day you were rescued." Her face is unreadable again, but softer, maybe. "So what do you remember?"

"You. In the rain. Digging in our trash bins. Burning the bread. My mother hitting me. Taking the bread out for the pig but then giving it to you instead."

"That's it. That's what happened. The next day, after school I wanted to thank you. But I didn't know how." If she knew him at all, she'd know he never needed her thanks. A little eye contact would have been nice though.

"We were outside at the end of the day. I tried to catch your eye. You looked away. And then…for some reason, I think you picked a dandelion." Why does he remember that? Such an odd little detail. It seemed important. Tiny Peeta shoves something else at him; it hits him right in the solar plexus. "I must have loved you a lot."

A brief but clear flash of pain crosses her face. She clutches her ribs tightly. "You did." She coughs to try to cover it, but he hears the painful catch in her voice. He's not sure how to feel about that. Tiny Peeta doesn't like it. Doesn't like it at all.

"And did you love me?" It's burning a question and he needs a real answer from the girl who was on fire.

"Everyone says I did. Everyone says that's why Snow had you tortured. To break me." Not a real answer.

"That's not an answer. I don't know what to think when they show me some of the tapes. In that first arena, it looked like you tried to kill me with those tracker jackers."

"I was trying to kill all of you. You had me treed." That was true, as he remembers it, from all versions of his memory.

"Later, there's a lot of kissing. Didn't seem very genuine on your part. Did you like kissing me?" It had hurt to watch that. To see it from outside. To see how much he meant it. To see how much she didn't. To see his face go from surprise to a painful sort of bliss the first time she kissed him. He could see how much he felt. How vulnerable he was. Why had he believed her? He had wanted to believe.  _Love._  It always came back to that word.

"Sometimes. You know people are watching now?"

_Sometimes?_ What does that mean? When? Why is she worried about the doctors? He had to let them inside his head every day, stir things up and dig around in the most personal, private things. Nothing was sacred for him anymore. Surely she can return the favor for just a few minutes. Maybe it's Gale. Maybe he's there, behind the glass. She'd kissed him, he knows that. Snow himself showed him the tape. "I know. What about Gale?"

"He's not a bad kisser either." The words have the effect of ice water on his swollen, convulsive heart. How could she have done those things if she was not a mutt? How could she do  _this_?

He allows his pain to speak. "And it was okay with both of us? You kissing the other?"

"No. It wasn't okay with either of you. But I wasn't asking your permission."

He's had enough. His heart is cold again. His laugh feels cold. He doesn't mind. "Well, you're a piece of work, aren't you?"

Satisfied, he lets her go, and he's glad she is gone.  _Go cry somewhere else, Tiny Peeta,_  he tells that part of himself.  _She's gone._

She is angry. Angry with him. That's okay, he's angry with her.  _You loved her._  Tiny Peeta tells him, small and defensive. His actions in the past seem to have backed that up. But he prefers to stay angry for the moment. He's still smarting, and it's easier.

…

"Peeta." Delly's tone is chiding. "Why did you say those things to her?" When she cocks her head at him sometimes she looks like a puppy scolding its own master. He can't take it seriously and he laughs.

"I'm sorry, Delly. I don't know. She just...," he searched for the right words, "she gets under my skin."

"Of course she does! I've told you how you felt about her all those years. She's going through a lot right now. You should be nicer to her."

"Nicer?  _Nicer?"_ He forces himself to calm down and remember that this is not Delly's fault, Delly is nice to everyone. She doesn't accept anything less. It's not in her nature to be suspicious of people's motives. "She wasn't very nice to me, Delly."

"I know, Peeta. She should have been. But you know how she is. Well,  _I_  know how she is. She's kind of like a wounded animal, when she's hurt. She lashes out. She almost never means what she says. You can't take it personally."

"Well, maybe she should think about how she makes other people feel."

She nods. "You're right, she should. But sometimes she can't help it. You're very important to her, and now that you..."

"Now that she doesn't have her puppy dog to love her and follow her around and beg for her emotional scraps she's  _sad_?"

"Oh Peeta." Is all she can say.

"Well? It's true, isn't it?"

"She cares about you and she thinks she's lost you. Do you know what she did after you called her... after you called her a..." She has a hard time saying the word, she is almost incapable of saying something that could hurt anyone. She lowers her voice to a whisper, like she used to when they would say naughty words in secret when they were kids, "... _a_ _mutt_?"

"No. I don't. No one tells me anything unless it will help me _recover_." He spits the last word out distastefully.

"She went and got herself shot, that's what. She took a really big chance in a war zone to get someone to think about what we're all doing fighting with each other instead of fighting the Capitol, and if she hadn't had armor, well, she would be dead." Delly musters all the force she can. "I think she did it because she thinks she'll never be able to tell you how important you are to her. How much she loves you. That you wouldn't even believe her now, because you don't trust her and she thinks you can't love her anymore. And you know what? She thinks you're right to not love her."

"People keep saying that, that she loves me. But I can't see it." He says. "I just can't."

"Oh Peeta." She says again. It's one of her stalling phrases. When she hasn't worked out her argument yet. She's mired in feeling bad for him, and it takes her a minute to bypass those feelings and get to her thoughts. He waits for her to get there. "You don't see her, Peeta. You don't see her disappear into a closet somewhere to hide all morning because it's just too hard for her to be around people. She blames herself for so many things, including what happened to you. And you might think that things are actually her fault but I'm telling you she is just a human being. She'll never forgive herself. She'll never get better unless she can get revenge on Snow, or you get better. You want to know what I think?"

She sits up straight, puts her shoulders back and puts on her very best confident, conspiratorial voice, like she's figured out something important. "I think she wants to get herself killed, punishing him for what he did to you." This actually disturbs him a little. Not because she would die, but because she'd want to, for him. It doesn't make sense. It must be a trick. "She told President Coin that she wants to kill him herself. It was one of the things she asked for when they made her the Mockingjay. And she made them pardon you and Johanna and Annie. Even Ennobaria is safe, if they ever find her."

"Pardon me? For what?" He's struggling to put it all together now.

"When you were saying what he wanted you to, on TV. Some people thought... some people called you a traitor."

"I was trying to save people! Didn't they know that? I was trying to keep Snow from killing everyone!"

"I know, Peeta.  _I_  know. And they know that now, but they didn't have any way of knowing that you didn't go over to Snow's side for real, did they? Not until they could see how badly you were being hurt. And even then they might have tried to make you pay for... whatever. I don't know. I'm not good at politics, Peeta." She's exasperated. "But I'm telling you that she saved you from whatever they would have done. She made President Coin say it in front of everyone! And everyone could tell that the President wasn't very happy about it."

"I didn't know that." He says.

"Well, now you know." She gives him a small squeeze on the arm. "Listen, I know it's been a long day today. Are you painting still? You should do some painting. I'll come by to see you tomorrow. Is that okay?"

"Of course, Delly. Of course it is."

She smiles at him, trying to give him her best, most hopeful face.

It's true though, he does need to think about some things.

 


	9. Mutt

Delly comes by the next day as promised.

"Hi Peeta. What are you working on?" He's busy sketching something, and she peeks over his shoulder before he can stop her.

She's not speechless often, but she is now. She sees his face and snaps her jaw shut tight. He flips the sketch over.

"I'm sorry, I didn't know you were coming in right then…I would have…" Peeta says.

She shakes herself and tries to wipe the shock off of her face. "No, I'm sorry Peeta. I know you…I know you've been through so much. Do you want to talk about it?" She asks, but she clearly does not want to talk about what's on the paper.

"No, Delly. I have plenty of other people to talk to about that." He says. "Lets talk about something else. How is your brother?"

"He's doing better!" She brightens. "He misses our parents, of course, but he's making friends now and he loves school."

"I'm glad." He says. Delly's younger brother is a sensitive little boy who had been having a hard time adjusting to life underground without his parents. Back in Twelve he was always outside, always had some kind of dirt on his face. "I remember he used to always come into the bakery to say hi. My father always gave him stale cookies if he had any. But only if my mother wasn't around, of course."

Delly laughs. "Of course. He talks about how nice your dad was to him. He was always nice to all of us kids."

"He was." Peeta says. He pauses before asking her. "When did you see him last? My father?"

"Oh, let me see." She says, her eyes look up absently while she searches her brain. "The last time I saw him was…my mother and I were running errands. We went into the bakery to get some bread. Your father was there, behind the counter. My mother asked him how he was doing with you going back into the arena. I wanted to kick her! She never thought before she asked those kind of questions." She puts her hand up and whispers, "She was kind of a busy body!" Her voice returns to its normal volume. "Your dad just shrugged and said he knew you'd do your best to do the right thing. He looked so sad. Like he thought you wouldn't come back." She looks down. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have told you that. It was too sad."

"No. No, it's the truth. I appreciate it." He says, wiping a tear from his cheek. "I just miss him."

"I know. I miss my mom, too. Even though she could be…you know. And my dad too."

"I know." He squeezes her hand. "Well, we're like family now. You can tell people I'm your brother again, like you used to."

She smiles. "You remember!" She says. "We had lots of fun together, didn't we?"

"We did, Delly."

…

The doctors decide that he is not enough of a threat to others (of course when they say "others" they mean her) to be confined to his room. He doesn't know if he feels safe enough, but he hasn't had a complete meltdown in about a week and he's stopped making people cry when they visit. He can tell them what year it is, where they are and all the major details of his life.

They start him out with a large public setting. Lunch in the dining hall. He thinks about sitting by himself, but as if he can read Peeta's thoughts his guard points him to a table across the room. "Docs said you should see if they'd let you sit with them. Can't hurt to ask. They say no, you can sit by yourself. You know the rules though. We'll be right here." The guard nods towards the shackles on his wrists.

He's become fond of his guards, they're the people he sees the most often. They're good people, a little uptight, but they're nice and they try really hard to not give him flashbacks. His medical team picked them specifically for their good naturedness and unflappability, but especially for the fact that they don't remind him of anyone he knows. These two are his favorite, Mike and Gabe. They're barrel-chested family men, and they are quite gregarious when they're not on duty. The other two guards he doesn't know as well. They're on the night shift, and that usually means putting up with his night terrors and irrational demands.

"Come on, kiddo. It'll be okay." Mike says.

The people at the table are eating enthusiastically and laughing at something Finnick is saying when he walks up. She's sitting right in front of him but she doesn't see him. She looks very different than the last time he saw her. Happy. Relaxed. Gale is next to her. Naturally. Between her amusement at Finnick and her choice of seats he's filled with something sudden and inexplicable. It feels like jealousy. But it can't be. He writes it off. She really does seem to have them all fooled. Even Delly, who has spent the last few weeks trying to tell him how much she has been suffering. As if she feels his thoughts, Katniss looks up. The blood drains from her face, and the table falls silent. It's Delly who speaks first.

"Peeta! It's so nice to see you out…and about." Nice cover, Delly. He thinks, amused. Very smooth.

"What's with the fancy bracelets?" Johanna asks. She's in one of those moods, he can tell. Up to no good. Just like old times, except without the torture and death and stuff.

"I'm not quite trustworthy yet," he says. "I can't even sit here without your permission." He glances back at his guards. One nods, the other tips his chin up at him encouragingly.

"Sure he can sit here. We're old friends." Johanna to his rescue. He'll have to remember to talk to her later. He misses her, in a funny kind of way. He understands why she hasn't come to see him though, she's been in the hospital and she's not one to relive unpleasant experiences if she doesn't have to. He doesn't blame her. He's part of that now. His doctor suggested that they get involved in some kind of group therapy, but she wasn't ready for it yet. And she doesn't want to risk triggering one of his episodes. She pats the space beside her.

He looks at his guards and they nod again, giving him permission. "Peeta and I had adjoining cells in the Capitol. We're very familiar with each other's screams." This makes Annie cover her ears. She gets that look in her eyes, the one that indicates a hasty retreat to the hiding place in her head. Finnick shoots a glare at Johanna. He wraps his arm around her protectively. This rubs Peeta the wrong way. He doesn't know why. Maybe because he felt so protective of her during their Theater days. But Finnick is the only one who can really ever protect her and draw her back out at the same time. Katniss looks at Annie and frowns at Peeta. This is really not going to go well, is it? He thinks. His anger is starting to give him a headache. He can feel his pulse pounding in his temples. Finnick whispers to Annie and she uncovers her ears.

"What?" Johanna says. "My head doctor says I'm not supposed to censor my thoughts. It's part of my therapy."

Everyone ducks their heads and pretends to eat. Finally Delly pipes up, "Annie, did you know it was Peeta who decorated your wedding cake? Back home, his family ran the bakery and he did all the icing." He knows she's trying to be helpful, but he's not sure if there's any salvaging the situation. It's like an inevitable train wreck.

Annie looks across Johanna like she might bite. "Thank you, Peeta. It was beautiful." He feels his anger ebb and gratification buoy his heart. For a minute he feels right. Like this is who he is. Someone who likes to make people happy.

"My pleasure, Annie," he says, and gives her a tentative smile.

Finnick decides it's time to extricate Annie before she gets overloaded or Johanna decides to be helpful again. "Good seeing you, Peeta."

"You be nice to her, Finnick. Or I might try and take her away from you." He's not sure why he feels like he needs Finnick to know that he sees Annie as a person, as a woman. He feels like he needs someone to know that he could be a viable partner and protector, even though he doesn't think of Annie in that way at all. Not after what he's seen her go through. Katniss is out. Johanna wouldn't want him. And Delly is as close to a sister as he'll ever have.

"Oh Peeta, Don't make me sorry I restarted your heart." Finnick says. He doesn't seem to take him very seriously.

Delly scolds him after they leave. "He did save your life, Peeta. More than once."

"For her." He nods dismissively at Katniss, who is glaring daggers at him over her stew. "For the rebellion. Not for me. I don't owe him anything." He is regaining all the anger he felt earlier plus some bitterness. He feels unimportant, minimized. No one takes him seriously, no one chooses him over anyone else, he's nothing but damaged goods and a giant fucking problem to solve. He hopes that his words tweak Katniss exactly the wrong way. They do.

"Maybe not. But Mags is dead and you're still here. That should count for something." Mags. Mags who walked into the fog without a single hesitation to save him. For her. He feels a stab of fresh anger open up like a new wound.

"Yeah, a lot of things should count for something that don't seem to, Katniss. I've got some memories I can't make sense of, and I don't think the Capitol touched them. A lot of nights on the train, for instance." The look on her face is satisfying. She doesn't like everyone knowing their business, does she? He can't help himself. Throwing it at her in front of Gale twists something in his gut in a way that hurts terribly good. "So, are you two officially a couple now, or are they still dragging out the star-crossed lover thing?" There were countless ways he'd been used. They'd taken his feelings, his ambitions, any chance at a normal life. But none was more painful than the corruption of the one thing he had that was true. But he can't admit that, now. Not even to himself.

"Still dragging." Johanna says faceciously.

He can't believe that after everything, they'd still be expected to put on a good show. Anger threatens to overwhelm him. He can feel his fingernails digging into his palms. He forces himself to calm down, he opens his hands and stretches them so that they can't spasm out of control or puncture his skin with his nails. It occurs to him that this in and of itself might be considered unusual behavior. That only angers him more. He feels abnormal and out of control. He can feel his fragile hold slipping.

"I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself." Gale says.

"What's that?" Peeta asks.

"You," Gale says.

"You'll have to be a little more specific," Peeta says. "What about me?"

Johanna is helpful again. "That they've replaced you with the evil-mutt version of yourself," she says. Thanks, Jo. He gives her a look, but he knows that she's probably howling away with her semi-insane cackle on the inside, laughing at her own jokes. Only her sense of humor is a tiny bit twisted. He remembers back in the dungeon, when she'd laugh and spit on her torturers. Taunting them. Daring them to kill her. It was suicidal then, but now he thinks she just does it to stir things up. Chaos and mayhem make her feel normal.

Gale downs his milk and looks at Katniss. "You done?" he asks her, she nods. They get up and leave abruptly. The guard at the door chastises her for trying to take her bread outside the dining hall but doesn't take her into custody. She looks upset. Good, he thinks. He smiles a little bit. Johanna was onto something with this dragging everyone down to her level. They could all be miserable together.

"PEETA!" Delly's face has gone an alarming shade of red.

"Yes Delly?" he says, a lot too innocently.

"Peeta Mellark!" She is squealing now. "I can't believe you just said that!"

He shrugs. But Tiny Peeta is threatening to make an appearance. He's gotten a little bigger, since the last time he popped up, since Delly forced him into thinking about Katniss. He puffs his little chest and makes himself heard, with his own voice. "You hurt her," Not-as-tiny Peeta says.

"No, you hurt her Peeta!" Delly thinks Not-as-tiny Peeta is talking to her. "That was… that was just mean! You owe her an apology! And Finnick too!"

"She's a mutt, Delly! Can't you see? She killed my family! She killed almost everyone we know!"

"No! She didn't! You know that Peeta." She snaps at him, her voice getting higher with every word. "Snow did!"

Not-as-tiny Peeta raises his voice. "She's right! You know it's true."

"It's not!" Mutt Peeta snaps back. "It's NOT."

"Snow made the decision. Not Katniss. If she had known what would happen she would never have shot that arrow!"

"NO! No! She did it on purpose! She knew what would happen!" He realizes suddenly that everyone can hear what is going on inside his head because it's also coming out of his mouth. Even Johanna was shocked. Delly is beside herself, vacillating between chastising and concern. He thinks she might explode.

"Come on, Peeta." His guards are beside him at once, one on each of his arms. "Time to go back." They lift him carefully and escort him back to his room, where he can argue with himself in private.

…

Haymitch delivers the request from Plutarch. They need him to train.

"For what?" He asks.

"For the military." Haymitch shrugs. "Everyone has to."

"Are you kidding me? They want me, the person who is under guard twenty-four hours a day, who tried to kill their Mockingjay," he shakes his head as if he's considering the reality of this moment, the idea seems so absurd, "to learn how to fight and kill better?"

"You'll still be under guard. Mike and Gabe get to go everywhere you go." Haymitch assures him.

"Whose idea was this?"

"Coin's. Plutarch agrees. He thinks we need to show Snow that you're recovering and you're ready to fight for us, or against him. Whichever scenario you are more comfortable with. Don't worry, you don't get any live ammo."

"Will Katniss be there?" He asks. It's a question that causes a tightness in his ribs to ask. He's become very good at avoiding her.

"Yep. She'll be around. But she's pushing for some field assignment, so probably not for long."

"Good." He says, retreating into his head. "That's good." He's playing out a thousand scenarios. He hasn't had a flashback recently but that doesn't mean anything. The last one was set off by the buzzing of a new piece of equipment in the room. Sent him hurtling into panic mode. He couldn't blink enough. He couldn't breathe. They were trying hard not to sedate him anymore, because he'd been sedated so often during his stay in the Theater and the Box. They were working on a way to get him to come out of his episodes naturally, to find a focus that helped distract him enough to pull him back to reality. So far the only thing that worked was pain. They'd discovered that by accident when he punched a wall and it brought him back.

They need him to act like he's okay. He doesn't know how well he can pull that off, he still feels like a rubber ball in a concrete room on the inside. He's twitchy, his mood shifts are sometimes dramatic and unprovoked. The only time he feels like himself is when he's painting. Some of the doctors are alarmed at the subjects he chooses. They try not to be, he's told them often enough about it all. But Snow knew when he created The Theater that it's one thing to hear about something, and quite another to see it. And Peeta has a gift for detail.

…

Haymitch tells him about the Star Squad, Katniss's new field assignment. A gimmick to both keep her busy and get some good promo material. Gale and Finnick are also part of it. Boggs, Coin's second in command, is in charge.

…

Coin visits him personally to give him the news. The Star Squad lost a soldier and they need him as a replacement. They're lacking some spark, and she's decided that he's the thing to heat things up.

Part of him really wants to go, to do something. Anything. Little Peeta puts in his two cents. He doesn't want to endanger her.

"Well, I don't think we have a choice." He says. To himself. "Besides, nobody asked you."


	10. Knots

The train took a long time. He was alone. He couldn't remember the last time he was alone in a room with no eyes, let alone restraints, on him.

It didn't help that he was on his way to join the Star Squad, and he was sure the reception would be less than warm. He mentally prepared himself for a variety of reactions. He expected they would take his gun, and he had no problem with that. They would probably put him under guard again, and he welcomed it. For now he was stranded in limbo, with no one to tell him what he could or couldn't do, no one to sedate him if he needed it, no one to talk to or scream at or ignore. His hands shook, his heart raced. He talked to himself. Not a compartmentalized himself, either. Just himself. Just to hear a voice. It was a long ride.

As expected he is met at the train station by Boggs and Katniss. It's clear that they weren't told he was the replacement. Boggs goes to make a call in vain to the president, and he and Katniss spend a few tense moments not looking at one another while they wait for him. She appears to be lost in thought, so it's probably more of a problem for him than her. He's wound up tight. But even though she is probably the last person in the world he wanted to be alone with, he is relieved to not be alone anymore.

Boggs returns, and he is livid. He doesn't need to explain why. They stomp in silence back to camp.

…

Jackson, Bogg's second in command, indicates he is to set up his tent in the center of camp. The whole camp buzzes with tension. He doesn't know what it was like before he got here, but he can feel every stomp and every hushed argument. Until one becomes not so hushed. It's Katniss. And she sounds furious.

"I wouldn't be shooting Peeta. He's gone. Johanna's right. It'd be just like shooting another of the Capitol's mutts."

Everything goes silent. His whole body reacts, not just his fists. Every cell in his body snaps back like a rubber band. His lips twist and scrunch up into a tight bloodless bundle. He's immobilized again. No moving, no breathing. He has no idea what the conversation is, what prompted such an outburst, but it almost doesn't matter. The words are out there. She couldn't take them back if she wanted to. And he suspects she doesn't.

So she has no qualms about shooting him. She's making sure everyone knows. That's great. Now for some reason she wants him to be humiliated as well. He remembers suddenly what happened after his very first interview with Caesar Flickerman, how angry she was. She thought that by admitting his feelings for her he had made her appear weak. Is it something like that again? Some kind of payback for a slight he can't even imagine? Or is it the one he can? That he is here?

He is tired, he is angry, he is vindicated, he is barely in control. He slowly relaxes his body and continues setting up his tent. When he's done it's time for dinner. A few people pat him on the back as they sit down. The physical contact makes him jump, but he appreciates the sentiment so he lets it go. That hasn't happened since before he was hijacked. He's used to people treating him as if he's a bomb that might go off at the slightest provocation. The meal is tense. Katniss disappears about half-way through and things lighten up a little. He sighs heavily. So it's not exactly him. It's her. Reacting to him.

Jackson "requests" that he sleep in the open in full view. He's cold and tired, and he has no intention of arguing. She sets up his guard and everyone settles in. He is finally comfortable. But his hands are still shaking. Leftover adrenaline, maybe. Or just his hands, being their new selves. Finnick comes over and sits down next to him.

"Hey Peeta."

"Oh, hey Finnick." He squeezes his hands together to keep them from flailing.

"Rope?" Finnick holds out a length of rope. He smiles, a wide, manic grin that is obviously intended to disarm him. It works, despite Peeta's best efforts to remain stoic. He reaches out and takes it. "Do you still remember how to do the knots from training?" Finnick asks.

"Some of them."

"It helps distract me. When I miss Annie, or I can't sleep."

"Thank you." Peeta says, working a basic fisherman's knot. They continue for a few moments in silence. "I'm sorry about what happened in the dining hall the other day." He says. "I didn't mean to be rude. Delly tells me I was pretty awful."

"It's okay. I understand."

"It's just that when we were...you know, in the Capitol...," he pauses. He doesn't want to be specific, it would hurt Finnick too much. "I wanted to help Annie but every time I tried to do anything, everyone had to pay for it. So when I see her with you, I feel terrible that I couldn't do what you do, protect her from things, help her deal with them. I felt so helpless. It makes me angry."

"I couldn't protect her either, Peeta!" Finnick says, making a sound that's kind of a half sigh, half sob. "It was horrible for me to be without her, knowing what they were probably doing to her." He pauses, considers saying something, then decides against it. "Let me know if you run out of knots and I'll teach you some more." He stands up and squeezes Peeta on the shoulder, turning to go back to his tent.

"Thanks, Finnick." Peeta says. Finnick turns around and smiles, nodding at him sadly.

…

Despite the therapeutic benefits of Finnick's rope, he's angry still. Furious, even. So when she comes out at midnight to take her shift on Peeta Watch, it's all he can do to keep his hands on his knots. At least they're occupied and she can't see them shaking. He'll have to remember to thank Finnick again next time he sees him. She doesn't speak. She stares at the knots in his hands for awhile, and then she avoids his gaze. For a long time. His sense of time is still kind of off kilter so he doesn't know exactly how long. He tends to forget that he has access to clocks now.

He holds out as long as he can. He needs to vent some of the venom in his system. "These last couple of years must have been exhausting for you. Trying to decide whether to kill me or not. Back and forth. Back and forth." He says. His anger at her is front and center, allowing Mutt Peeta full access to his mouth.

She thinks about what he said. She's not angry. Not defensive. This is new. He expected a fight. Instead she sighs sadly and says, "I never wanted to kill you. Except when I thought you were helping the Careers kill me. After that, I always thought of you as…an ally." It's so confusing, he's still angry even though her lack of reaction has deflated it somewhat. His mind is muddled, he still has the great big puzzle of her in front of him, and none of the pieces are connected. He has what he's been told, he has what he remembers. None of it is clear. All he has are labels. Empty slots.

"Ally." The world rolls around in his mouth. He tests it, to see how it feels. He adds it to his other labels. "Friend. Lover. Victor. Enemy. Fiancee. Target. Mutt. Neighbor. Hunter. Tribute. Ally. I'll add it to the list of words I use to try to figure you out. The problem is, I can't tell what's real anymore, and what's made up."

There's a weighted silence. He rolls the words around again in his head to see if anything clicks. Nothing does.

"Then you should ask, Peeta. That's what Annie does." Finnick's voice shakes him out of his confusion. He hadn't noticed the others were awake, but the squad sits up as if on cue, their cover blown.

"Ask who? Who can I trust?" Katniss? Gale? He scoffs. His defenses have slammed up. No, there's no one he can trust. Not even himself.

"Well us for starters. We're your squad," says Jackson.

"You're my guards," he points out.

"That, too," she says. "But you saved a lot of lives in Thirteen. It's not the kind of thing we forget."

He thinks about how difficult it was for him to get that warning out. What it had cost him. Back when he was still sure about anything. He doesn't remember what he knew, only that he didn't doubt himself like he does now. He remembers trusting his senses, his mind. It would be a foreign feeling now. It feels like he's never been any other way, even though he knows he was.

Katniss is looking at him strangely. Her expression is almost sympathetic. Little Peeta throws him a bone. He remembers asking her what her favorite color was. Remembers knowing that they'd kill for one another but he'd had no idea what color she preferred. Green. It was green. Of course. The woods.

"Your favorite color…it's green?" He asks, hoping she'll be able to confirm. He feels a small sense of triumph over his mutt self.

"That's right. And yours is orange." She says. There's a light in her eyes now that twists something inside his chest.

But he doesn't remember. Orange. He thinks of all the orange things he knows. Pumpkins. No. Fall leaves. Maybe. Warning signs. No. He doesn't remember preferring any of those things.

"Not bright orange," she says, seeing his confusion. "But soft. Like the sunset. At least that's what you told me once."

"Oh. Thank you." He is searching for anything, anything to help him latch onto what she's telling him. He doesn't find it, but it feels...right.

A strange intensity grips her expression, almost like she's holding back an entire ocean of words. "You're a painter. You're a baker. You like to sleep with the windows open. You never take sugar in your tea. And you always double-knot your shoelaces." Her voice is tight with emotion. She gets up and ends her shift, ducking into her tent before he can get in a reply. He feels for his boots inside his sleeping bag; he forgot to take them off. They are double knotted. They all sit in dumbfounded silence for awhile, then the new Peeta Watch shift starts, and there's a whole new set of questions burning a hole in his brain.

…

They come up with a game, using Finnick's trick. They call it real or not real. It's useful. He spends the rest of the morning attempting to reconstruct some kind of basic framework in his head. Jackson sets up his guards so that there's always someone he knows, someone who can answer questions about home, or the games, and when Katniss is on, all the smallest details that he knows won't shatter the fragile peace they have established. Her attitude has changed. He wonders what happened, when she disappeared during dinner that night. Something has changed her, literally overnight.

People start talking to him like he's a real person again. They still have guns, and he knows they'd use them, but he feels more at ease than he has in a long time. It's comfortable to be under guard, and people are treating him like a human being. Not a patient, not a time bomb. It's nice. There are moments when his head scrambles reflexively and he has to take breaks. He understands now why Annie puts her hands over her ears. Because one more shred of sensory input, one more tiny sound or movement or touch will push him over the edge. He's constantly skating overload. But he has to know. He needs answers as much as he needs air and food and water.

There was a fire in Twelve. No one believes it was his fault. No one blames Katniss either, which surprises him, although maybe it shouldn't. He thinks it was Snow who planted that notion. The squad defends her. But he gets the feeling that they might defend him now too. There's a loose bond between them. They're a unit. They watch out for one another, even if they fight amongst themselves. The film crew seems to be included in this fluid camaraderie. They're not soldiers, but they spend all their time together.

The next day they're preparing to shoot a promo, when he notices something about one of the camera men. One of them is different in a familiar way, something that he knows he should be able to place. Then it hits him. He's never seen him speak. Never heard him utter a sound, in fact.

"You're an Avox, aren't you?" He says, eying him curiously. "I can tell by the way you swallow." He tells them about Darius and Lavinina. His emotions spiral. He keeps seeing Lavinia's eyes cloud, her head drop to her chest, red hair plastered to her face, her heart stopped. And Darius...he can't even think about Darius if he wants to stay sane. Someone must know if those images he sees are true. "Real or not real?" He demands. No one says a word. Their expressions are blank slates. "Real or not real?" He demands again, his patience growing thin.

Boggs finally answers. Boggs had headed up his rescue team, they tell him. "Real, to the best of my knowledge...real." He says gently but firmly, a little perplexed, and still a little shocked.  _You're a soldier!_  He wants to scream. It killed him to think that he'd seen worse things in his short life than a battle-hardened commander with a high-up position in a national war.

"I thought so," he says, picking out the detail that separated that memory from so many others. "There was nothing...shiny about it." And then the vision of Darius grips him again and he wanders off, needing a drink and a place to lie down before they start shooting. It might help, but he doubts it.


	11. Lamb Stew

Boggs gave him back his gun, but made a point of pointing out that it's only loaded with blanks. This doesn't bother him. What bothers him is war. He's not like the rest of them, he doesn't want to be involved in combat. Not for retaliation or revenge, not for justice or a righteous cause, whether it's real or fake. He's there because he has no choice. Coin made that clear. There are a few active pods on their "set" and the possibility of real danger unnerves him, but that's it. It's the concept that he can't get behind.

Boggs is saying something about volunteers, and plenty of people raise their hands. So he doesn't need to. He's not listening to the details; he assumes he can just move in with the rest of them, do what he's trained to do, avoid getting killed and it will be over.

People are assigned, the cameras are in place, smoke begins to float through the street. It's not real, but it adds to his disorientation. There's gunfire, everyone ducks. The cameras dodge and weave between them, getting this shot or that. Asking people to feel certain ways so they can get close ups. The acting is terrible. The mood is almost light. People are laughing. But there is still real danger. Boggs yells something to get the squad to focus.

And then chaos erupts. There's a flash and a boom and real smoke fills the air. Real screaming happens, no one is acting anymore. Another blast goes off. His ears have stopped working. He's wandering around, trying to find someone who can tell him what is happening and what to do, when he sees him. Boggs. Blood everywhere. And Katniss hunched over the body.

Little Peeta roars.  _Is she hurt? Is the blood hers?_

 _She's killed him!_ Mutt Peeta rages.

 _NO. She's trying to help._  Little Peeta asserts, as hard as he can. This is a fight he may not win, there are images of blood and horror in his head that Mutt Peeta is tearing through, consuming them like he's been starving for a thousand years.

 _Not real!_  Little Peeta screams, as he tries to locate Katniss.

Suddenly she turns toward him, looking for something. Her arms are soaked and her face is smeared with blood. The image is too much. The vision of Katniss, bloody and sucking the life out of him in the cave overwhelms and Little Peeta is pushed out.

Mutt Peeta assumes complete control. Things shift and sputter. People yell. Little Peeta hears it all from very far away, like it's happening on a television in another room.

Something is happening. He needs to defend the squad. Against her.  _She will kill everyone!_  There are explosions. Smoke. A horrible acrid smell. A sense of impending danger. He must kill her. Someone tries to stop him. He pushes back. Screaming and restraints and more blood. He struggles. He struggles, and struggles, and struggles, until he feels the familiar wave of unconsciousness sweep him from black into black.

Somewhere very far inside him, Little Peeta screams.

…

A sound wakes him. He's not sure what it was. He's in an unfamiliar room, watching an unfamiliar screen. He's on it. They all are. He feels something else that's familiar. Handcuffs. What happened?

He's watching it now, on the screen. The propo. It starts as planned. Then Boggs…Boggs! Katniss runs to him, tries to scoop up his legs and make them go back on. It doesn't work. They do something with the holo.

Then he sees himself. Insane. Lurching. Yanking her up and off of Boggs just as they're trying to drag him to safety. Someone tries to tackle him, he easily defends himself, launching the soldier backwards and into a pod. There's blood everywhere. Katniss yells something to the the man trapped in the net. A group of soldiers restrain him. Drag him away kicking and screaming, trying to carry out his mission. His mission. Who gave him that mission? Not the same mission as the rest of them. Snow's mission. Kill her.  _Kill Katniss._

Then it's over. They're all dead. Assumed, anyway. The question hangs in the air: what to do next.

He speaks, because no one else is saying it.

"Isn't it obvious?" Peeta says. Despair drags him into down into coldness, past feeling anything at that moment. "Our next move…is to kill me."

"Don't be ridiculous," Jackson scoffs.

Why can't she see? "I just murdered a member of our squad!" He yells.

Finnick comes to his defense, trying to rationalize it. It doesn't matter. Mitchell is still dead. He is still responsible. He is a monster. A weapon. Out of control. Dangerous. He says as much.

"You can't take me with you. It's only a matter of time before I kill someone else." He looks around. He sees everything from sympathy to forced hardness on their faces. "Maybe you think it's kinder to just dump me somewhere. Let me take my chances. But that's the same thing as handing me over to the Capitol. Do you think you'd be doing me a favor by sending me back to Snow?" A look crosses Katniss's face when he says that that he never wants to see again; so haunted, so much loss.

 _I'm still here!_  Little Peeta tries to say. But he's weak from the fight and hopeless from the circumstances. He wants to shake her and hold her. He's growing, but it's difficult. His new self-awareness has slapped him in the face and it hurts. It's done damage to Mutt Peeta, but at a cost.

Gale speaks up. "I'll kill you before that happens. I promise." Can Peeta trust him? Surely Gale would love an opportunity to be rid of him. But there is Katniss to consider. If Gale kills him, would she ever forget? Could she live with the person who killed...whatever Peeta is to her? He's past wondering whether or not she cares. If she's not a mutt, she might. In some way. But it doesn't matter.

"It's no good." He says, shaking his head. "What if you're not there to do it? I want one of those poison pills like the rest of you have." It seems only fair.

Katniss frowns. "It's not about you. We're on a mission. And you're necessary to it," she says. He has no idea how, because he's been out while they presumably put together the plan. He supposes when they need him, they'll tell him. Before he can ask she dismisses any further discussion. "Think we might find some food here?"

She takes half the squad with her to look. They come back with cans and some cookies.

"Everybody grab a can." Gale orders.

Some of the natives of Thirteen hesitate. They're not used to this kind of food distribution, everything is so tightly controlled there. He digs around in the cans. Then he sees it. A can of lamb stew. He's pushed back in time. The memories feel so real. He would bet his life that they are.

They were on the train. Having their first taste of real Capitol food. They'd eaten until they got sick. The lamb stew was Katniss's favorite. Then later, in the cave, when they'd finally gotten a meal from Haymitch. They had been so hungry. But they were...he remembers how it felt to be with her, alone. To feel her lips pressed against his, soft and warm in the cold cave. To kiss her back. To hold her. Stroke her hair until she slept. Despite the circumstances, despite nearly dying, they were together, and it was everything he had ever wanted.

"Here." He hands the can out to her. Wonders if she'll remember.

She takes it. "Thanks." She says, opening it. The corners of her mouth turn up so slightly that he almost misses it. She can still smile despite everything, but he doesn't think she is aware she's doing it. Their eyes connect for a second. The memory hangs between them like a thread. "It even has dried plums," she says softly.

…

"I'm not going," he says, and installs himself on the sofa, intending to fight if necessary. "I'll either disclose your position or hurt someone else."

"Snow's people will find you," Finnick says.

He's frustrated. Why won't they just agree that he's a serious liability? "Then leave me a pill. I'll only take it if I have to."

"That's not an option. Come along," says Jackson firmly, dismissively.

"Or you'll what? Shoot me?" He says.

"We'll knock you out and drag you with us," says the soldier named Homes. "Which will both slow us down and endanger us."

"Stop being noble! I don't care if I die! Katniss, please. Don't you see, I want out of this?" He's begging. He's sure that she does see. He can see it in her eyes. But there's something else there, and that's what worries him. What does she need him for? What could he possibly have to offer?

"We're wasting time. Are you coming voluntarily or do we knock you out?" she shouts. He buries his face in his hands, willing them all to suddenly see things his way and agree to leave him. But it doesn't work, and he accepts his fate and gets up to join them.

"Should we free his hands?" Leeg 1 asks.

"No!" Peeta growls at her, drawing his cuffs close to his body posessively. They can't risk it. She's probably feeling kind, considering that he's talking about killing himself, but it's a stupid idea.

"No," Katniss says at the same time. "But I want the key." Jackson hands it over.

Turns out that Pollux used to work in the tunnels after he became an Avox. For five years. Castor recounts the story to them. It's a heavy story, no one knows what to say when Little Peeta pops up to assist.

"Well, then you just became our most valuable asset," he says. Castor laughs and Pollux smiles a little. The difficult moment passes, and they move on.

…

The tunnels are dark and smell horrible but they make good time. After about six hours in they stop to rest in a small room, Pollux indicating that they have four hours to rest. Peeta lays down and tries to sleep. It's no use. He can't. So he closes his eyes and tries to rest. But he can't shut his mind off. He can see Katniss, she dropped off as soon as her head hit the ground. She looks so different when she's sleeping. Weightless. Her features float on her face. Still. For the most part. Occasionally she whimpers or makes a small sound, but she doesn't thrash or scream this time. She's too exhausted. And they're living in a nightmare, so there's no difference between being awake and asleep.

He's still upset that she wouldn't leave him. His head may be a jumble, but watching himself on that screen...he is what Johanna said he is. The evil mutt version of himself. He wonders what happened to the Peeta he was before, the Peeta who loved Katniss unconditionally; the one who loved that she loved lamb stew. He'd had a small glimpse, a moment in Old Peeta's shoes, and it was opening up cracks in his heart everywhere. What he felt for her had been overwhelming. Selfless. True. More feelings like that threatened to crack through to the surface, but he couldn't handle them. He pushed them back. Held onto that one small moment, a hungry kiss in a cave from a long time ago when they were different people. He allows himself to get lost in the feeling, allows it to substitute for sleep, to stand in for pain as a distraction.

Some time later he becomes aware of Jackson and Katniss talking. Then he hears the holo clicking, hears her breathing. He opens his eyes and she's right there, next to him, and he's looking up at her face. She looks tired, the weight of a war descended again now that she's awake. He studies her face. Her eyes are closed, her mouth is tight. Her skin is dirty, and her body language in general screams fatigue. But she is familiar. He is settling slowly into the notion that she is not a weapon of the Capitol. He is. Just hours ago he had tried to smash open her head with a rifle butt. Now she trusts him to sleep next to her. He wonders if she recognizes when Mutt Peeta recedes and the real him peeks out at the world. She must. She doesn't trust him enough to remove his cuffs, but she wouldn't leave him. He wonders about her motivations. Is there a strategic play in keeping him alive? Maybe. Maybe she plans to use him in some way, still. He can't put it past her. She's hardened. A soldier. Intent on taking Snow down at any cost. He has to wonder if he will be part of that cost. If she will allow that to happen. He thinks about Delly's theory that Katniss wants to kill Snow to avenge his hijacking, his torture. If he is part of the cost of revenge, what would that do to her? He wonders if she sees the paradox in sacrificing him to get revenge for what Snow did...to him. How can she not?

As if she can feel him thinking about her, she opens her eyes and looks down at him.

"Have you eaten?" She asks.

He's tired. He shakes his head no. She holds up a can of chicken and rice soup and he sits up to eat it as she opens it. She hands it over to him and he inhales it like he would have in the dungeons. As quickly as possible.

"Peeta, when you asked about what happened to Darius and Lavinia, and Boggs told you it was real, you said you thought so. Because there was nothing shiny about it. What did you mean?" She asks.

"Oh I don't know exactly how to explain it. In the beginning, everything was just complete confusion. Now I can sort certain things out. I think there's a pattern emerging. The memories they altered with the tracker jacker venom have this strange quality about them. Like they're too intense and the images aren't stable. You remember what it was like when we were stung?" He flashes back to the first arena, trying to get her to run, trying to fight Cato off with a head full of hallucinations.

"Trees shattered. There were giant colored butterflies. I fell in a pit of orange bubbles.  _Shiny_  orange bubbles," she says thoughtfully.

"Right. But nothing about Darius or Lavinia was like that. I don't think they'd given me any venom yet."

"Well, that's good, isn't it? If you can separate the two, then you can figure out what's true."

"Yes. And if I could grow wings, I could fly. Only people can't grow wings. Real or not real?" he says bitterly.

"Real. But people don't need wings to survive."

"Mockingjays do." He finishes the soup and hands the can over to her.

She looks him over. "There's still time," she says gently. "You should sleep."

He lies back down, but he can't close his eyes. A dial catches them and he watches it move back and forth, back and forth. She stretches her hand out slowly, so slowly, and brushes a lock of hair from his forehead. He feels his body tense in reaction, but doesn't push her hand away like Mutt Peeta would like him to. She continues to smooth his hair, and he almost lets himself enjoy it. It feels good. It feels right. He recalls a time when he did a similar thing to her, back in the cave. Back in his recently recovered memory, the one that he's holding closer to his heart than his own blood.

"You're still trying to protect me. Real or not real?" He says.

"Real. Because that's what you and I do. Protect each other."

He sighs and closes his eyes. The only thing he can feel is the warmth of her hand as sleep pulls him under.


	12. Underground

_Katniss._  It's not her name, it's a force. It's a compulsion. Something buried deep inside him has been switched on remotely. To kill. Destroy. It's different than at the fateful propo shoot, this time he can see it from the outside for what it is. They (he doesn't know what, just that they are mutts) are coming to kill her, and he is expected to assist. "Katniss! Get out of here!" he screams.

"Why? What's making that sound?" she's already alarmed. Her bow is drawn and pointed at his head but he doesn't care. She needs to be able to protect herself, especially from him. He curses them for letting him remain close. He is in control now, but he has no idea how long that will last. The smallest thing could set him off, and he has no way of predicting when or if some booby trap in his brain may hand the keys to his body over to Mutt Peeta. And Snow.

"I don't know. Only that it has to kill you. Run! Get out! Go!" Panic and adrenaline flood his system.

"Whatever it is, it's after me. It might be a good time to split up," she says. It's a ridiculous notion. To sacrifice herself when she's the thing holding them together, compelling them. _She has no idea,_ he thinks, _still_.

"But we're your guard," says Jackson.

"And your crew," adds Cressida.

"I'm not leaving you," Gale says.

It's settled. Where she goes, they go. No one is surprised but her.

…

A horrible gurgling scream echoes through the tunnels and fills the air. He shudders as he recognizes it. "Avoxes. That's what Darius sounded like when they tortured him."

"The mutts must have found them," says Cressida.

"So they're not just after Katniss," says Leeg 1.

"They'll probably kill anyone. It's just that they won't stop until they get to her," says Gale. He speaks with an air of authority about it. Possibly his hunting instincts, possibly he has some intel Peeta would not be privy to.

"Let me go on alone. Lead them off. I'll transfer the Holo to Jackson. The rest of you can finish the mission." Again. She's never going to get anyone to agree to that, so she should just give it up. But he understands her impulse for self-sacrifice. It's a game they play. Which one of them can die for the other first.

"No one's going to agree to that!" Jackson echoes his thoughts, exasperated.

"We're wasting time!" says Finnick.

"Listen," Peeta whispers. The Avoxes voices have been silenced. The whisper of the mutts is louder. Closer. Behind them, and below them. The discussion of splitting up is over.

…

A strong smell wafts up from below, and it's not sewage. Katniss gags and Jackson reflexively orders everyone to put their masks on, but Katniss waves them off. It's something that is clearly designed to unnerve her alone. He recognizes it. The smell of roses. But not just any roses. Snow's roses. He knows it because he's been near it before. Many times. It was impossible to be within ten feet of Snow without knowing that smell for the rest of your life.

Katniss manages to shake it off and leads them out into the Transfer, an underground road that delivery trucks use. She darts out into the street, hunting pods as surely as she hunted anything back in the forests of Twelve. One pod goes down. They skirt something else called the Meat Grinder, but just like in the woods, sometimes there are wild surprises. Messalla gets caught in one and it's a horrible image. He shuts everything down but his survival brain, like he had to sometimes during his time with Snow. Nothing matters but getting them out. They're all dumbstruck with the horror of Messalla, frozen in space, his flesh falling off his bones.

"Can't help him!" Peeta yells, and starts shoving at them indiscriminately. "Can't!" He manages once more. He glances back at Jackson and Leeg One as they make their stand at the intersection. They're not coming. He makes a note to grieve for them later. He can't now. They wade through sewage, flee Peacekeepers and the freakish white lizard rosemutts. Gale blows a bridge. The smell of mixed sewage and Snow's cloying roses is overwhelming and nauseating. But he manages to hold on to his faculties, just long enough to get her to safety. He owes her that.

He's behind her, moving her forward. She's still in shock. Her hunting reflexes are still on, because as he lifts her up (somehow, despite the cuffs) onto the ladder and before he forces her hands to take the rungs she takes out a mutt. "Climb!" He orders. Once she's moving, she regains the use of her limbs. They can't move fast enough. They finally reach the top and she pulls him and Cressida up through the hatch. She starts to descend again, hearing the screams from below. Someone yells hoarsely at her to climb. She emerges again, but she won't leave the hatch even after Gale climbs out of it.

"Someone's still alive," she wails.

"No Katniss. They're not coming," says Gale. "Only the mutts are."

She pauses for a second, her face frozen in horror and grief. She brings the Holo cube to her lips and whispers to it softly, dropping it into the hatch. Everything explodes. Including the fragile grip he has on his mind, as he realizes that Finnick is gone. They're all gone. He drops back against the nearest wall. His vision spins. The world has gone silent after the blast. They're moving on, but he can't. He can't move. He can't risk it. He's slipping too fast. And he's literally slipping down the wall, his legs unable to support him any longer. He buries his face in his hands.

"Peeta," she says. He hears her through a wall of heat but he can't answer.

"Peeta?" she's more forceful now, a tinge of desperation in her voice.

"Leave me," he whispers. "I can't hang on." He can't even see her anymore, he's pushing his words out through the concrete in his throat.

"Yes. You can!" She says. She has more faith in him than he does at this point. For the tiniest moment he wonders at her, at how far they've come in just a few days. Only to lose everything now, here.

"I'm losing it. I'll go mad. Like them." He's a mutt. He's going to die here, a mutt. He hears nothing. Good. Maybe she has come to her senses and gone. Then he feels it. Her lips. Firm and strong and present. Begging him. He shudders hard, the memories he tried to hold back earlier roaring up through him like a fireball through a tunnel. The heated, desperate contact of her mouth sends him back to another place, another dangerous situation, another time she had put her lips on his. The heat of the beach, the heat of their half-naked bodies pressed up against each other, the heat of the kiss that he had wished would never end.

Her hands slide up his arms to hold his hands tightly to her chest. Their faces are so close he can feel her breath still, on his lips. He can smell her. "Don't let him take you from me," she says.

Snow. Don't let Snow take him from her. Her fingers burn into his where they meet, her touch is like a brand, claiming him. Refusing to let him go, to let him give in to what Snow has done to him. "No. I don't want to…," he says weakly.

Her hands tighten even more, until the pain of the pressure brings Little Peeta back into focus. She says the words, the real words that had echoed through his mind a million times when he had tried to keep her memory with him, when Snow tried to take her away from him. He hungers to hear them, he hungers for her. He fights off his mutt self, who is gnashing teeth and howling at him. Demanding that he see her as a threat. But he doesn't listen.

"Stay with me," she says.

His vision clears, and he sees her face in front of him like it's the only home he's ever had. There's only one answer he can give her.

"Always," he says.

 


	13. Let Go

Things move quickly. He has difficulty processing it all.

"How far to the street?" Pollux indicates it's just above them. They scramble up through the utility hatch, taking refuge in an apartment they have to take by force. When Peeta reaches the top of the hatch, he's greeted by an unfortunate half painted woman with an arrow through her heart. They discuss how much time they have before they need to move on, where they could possibly go. Cressida thinks she can find a safe house.

He collapses on a velvet sofa and bites down on fabric that makes his teeth squeak, to keep from screaming. He knows Pollux is grieving for Castor, Gale is wounded, and Cressida lost half her crew and is verging on collapse. And Katniss…Katniss is bare knuckling through it, but he knows her well enough still to tell she's almost ready to break.

She tries to uncuff him, but he won't let her.

"No," he says. "Don't. They help hold me together."

"You might need your hands," says Gale.

"When I feel myself slipping, I dig my wrists into them, and the pain helps me focus," says Peeta. A coping mechanism he'd developed in Thirteen breaking his knuckles on walls.

They raid the woman's closets for clothes to disguise their weapons and uniforms long enough to get them somewhere safe. He moves through it all by rote, in a haze, still unfocused and tired from his near collapse into the raging void of Mutt Peeta. Cressida leads them out and through the streets to a row of shops. She puts on her best Capitol voice and takes them into a shop that appears to sell fur undergarments. He's so exhausted he can barely pay attention to what they're doing there. One of Plutarch's people. Well, "people" in a loose sense of the word. Their host is almost more feline than homo-sapien, a tattooed and whiskered cat woman who leads them to a panel and indicates a set of stairs that lead down, down, down into musty dark. Katniss makes the decision about whether to trust Tigris or not, and the rest of them follow. Her instincts are generally good. If not, well, hopefully he can get Gale to shoot him before he takes the nightlock pill.

They set up beds of fur pelts and triage their wounds. Gale needs stitches, then he collapses into sleep.

Katniss turns to Peeta. She cleans his wounds gently, rinsing and bandaging them without removing his cuffs. He looks at her, still curious about what changed her from hostile force to someone who would (for all she knew) risk her life to kiss him and bring him back from the brink of madness.

She starts to tell him, "You've got to keep them clean, otherwise the infection could spread and-"

"I know what blood poisoning is, Katniss," he says, his voice just quiet enough for her to hear. He is remembering more and more about the cave by the minute, whether he wants to or not. "Even if my mother isn't a healer."

Her face says that she wasn't expecting him to remember that. "You said that same thing to me in the first Hunger Games. Real or not real?"

"Real," he says. "And you risked your life getting the medicine that saved me?"

"Real." She shrugs. "You were the reason I was alive to do it."

"Was I?" The memories slip away from him then, going as easily as it had come. Succubus Katniss's face flashes briefly against his vision of the real her. It takes everything he has to keep from slipping back into Mutt Peeta's waiting hands. Little Peeta sighs, exhausted from the fight. Suddenly he feels both too young and far too old. "I'm so tired, Katniss."

"Go to sleep," she says softly. He makes her shackle him to something on the wall. She's concerned about his comfort, but he doesn't have the energy to tell her he's slept under much worse conditions. He's out in a few minutes.

…

When they all wake she confesses. Her conscience must have gone into overdrive with the guilt she is most certainly feeling over the deaths of two thirds of their party in what has to be close to just a single day. No one is surprised. The others try to convince her that everyone knew, and especially that everyone knew the risks. She doesn't seem convinced. She'll spiral into uselessness if she keeps guilting herself. He knows that one personally. When you're forced to watch people you know suffer, in order to stay sane you have to accept that there is and was nothing you could do to make it better or easier. Things you can't change, you just can't change. Gale is the last to try to convince her. Cressida backs him. Finally she turns to Peeta.

"What do you think, Peeta?" she asks.

"I think…you still have no idea. The effect you can have." He shifts to a sitting position. "None of the people we lost are idiots. They knew what they were doing. They followed you because they believed you really could kill Snow."

This seems to satisfy her. He has reached the part of her that needs redemption. Needs to not let their squad members and friends have died in vain. Puffing up with new resolve, she gets out her map and asks, "Where are we Cressida?"

"About five blocks from the City Circle," Cressida says. Walking distance. Snow will have deactivated pods to avoid killing citizens, so the risk of getting caught by Peacekeepers increasing is at least balanced by the lack of pods.

Tigris closes the shop and invites them upstairs for a meager meal. They watch the news. Katniss remarks that Coin won't know what to do with her once she finds out she's still alive. Still alive? What did that mean? Coin wanted her dead? Tigris laughs and says something about no one knowing what to do with Katniss.

…

No one comes up with a plan, so they decide to sleep for the night.

But he can't sleep. He knows that he's still a liability. The past forty eight hours loop over and over in his head. He tries to remember what it felt like when he started to go mutt. Tries to remember anything that could help him predict when he's going to lose it. He comes up with nothing, and he shifts restlessly in frustration. Gale stirs.

"Hey Peeta." he says groggily.

"Sorry, did I wake you?"

"Not really." Gale rubs his eyes and touches his bandaged neck gingerly. "You need anything?" He asks.

"Some water, if you're getting up."

"Sure." Gale says. A few minutes later he returns.

"Thanks," Peeta says.

"No problem," Gale replies. "I wake up ten times a night anyway."

"To make sure Katniss is still here?"

"Something like that," Gale admits.

"That was funny, what Tigris said. About no one knowing what to do with her."

"Well, we never have," Gale says.

They laugh. It's an odd feeling, to share something like love for the same person. They're beyond jealousy, beyond any adversarial impulses. They have more in common than they ever have before. They're squad members and allies who share a lost home and their love for the same girl. He remembers the night Gale had been whipped. Standing in the kitchen looking down at them, their fingers locked together in sleep. His heart had broken, that day. It didn't change anything, but it had still hurt.

"She loves you, you know. She as good as told me after they whipped you."

"Don't believe it," Gale answers. "The way she kissed you in the Quarter Quell…well, she never kissed me like that."

"It was just part of the show," he says. But he lets himself think about how much that kiss had meant. It had been strong enough to worm its way up through all the lies and confusion, in a moment he needed to remember it. He lets himself consider that maybe she meant it back.

"No, you won her over. Gave up everything for her. Maybe that's the only way to convince her you love her." They pause for a long moment. "I should have volunteered to take your place in the first Games. Protected her then."

"You couldn't. She'd never have forgiven you. You had to take care of her family. They matter more to her than her life." he says.

"Well, it won't be an issue much longer. I think it's unlikely all three of us will be alive at the end of this war. And if we are, I guess it's Katniss's problem. Who to chose." Gale yawns. "We should get some sleep."

"Yeah." His handcuffs slide down the support, he's ready to go back to sleep. "I wonder how she'll make up her mind."

"Oh, that I do know." Gale says. "Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without."

He's too tired and too confused to think about it, let alone argue one way or the other. It's cold, he thinks as he falls off the edge into sleep.

…

The next morning over breakfast they watch Beetee's attempts to hijack the Capitol airwaves. They get a better idea of what the rebels are up to, as well as Snow's forces. Civilians are being evacuated, herded towards the city center. Citizens are expected to house refugees, as well as businesses. "Tigris, that could be you," Peeta says, and they all agree that they need to move on before the Peacekeepers arrive to commandeer her floor space.

Gale calls a Capitol strategy to counteract the rebels' figuring out how to mine sweep pods with cars.

Outside Tigris's windows the streets are packed with evacuees. Katniss is impatient, she wants to take advantage of the crowds as cover. During a break in Beetee's break-ins, the Capitol news reports that a young man who resembled Peeta was beaten to death. They show a picture, the unfortunate boy looks nothing like him except for a mop of frosted blond curls.

"People have gone wild." Cressida murmurs.

Katniss and Gale leave the room on the pretense of washing dishes, and Peeta can't help watching them. He's had similar strategic conversations with her, when they were about breaking off from the pack in the arena. He can guess what they're planning. He decides it is probably better for him to go on his own anyway, follow them. That way he can make sure no one gets them from behind. Have their backs, so to speak. He could be good for a distraction, considering what happened to the man they beat to death.

So it's not surprising when they come back to him and suggest he stay back at Tigris's.

He announces he's going to go out on his own.

"What if you…lose control?" Katniss asks.

"You mean…go mutt? Well, if I feel that coming on, I'll try to get back here," he tells her. He thinks he could, maybe. But his plans are different than she thinks.

"And if Snow gets you again? You don't even have a gun." Gale points out.

"I'll just have to take my chances," Peeta says. "Like the rest of you." Gale fishes around in his pocket and pulls out his nightlock capsule. He lets it sit in his hand, weighing the gift, considering the implications and what it symbolizes as well as the reality. He doesn't know whether to accept it or not. Is it kindness? Is it a way to get rid of him? His mind is clouded. He can't reason it out. "What about you?"

"Don't worry. Betee showed me how to detonate my explosive arrows by hand. If that fails, I've got my knife. And I'll have Katniss," Gale smiles. "She won't give them the satisfaction of taking me alive." It's an agreement they have, to kill the another in the event of capture.

"Take it Peeta," Katniss says, her voice stretched thin. She reaches out and closes his fingers over the pill. "No one will be there to help you."

He watches her sleep, when she does. Takes in their last night. One or all of them might be dead within a matter of hours. None of them really sleep, but they close their eyes for awhile.

…

They leave Tigris a can of salmon and in return she spends an hour fixing them up, remaking their Capitol facades. They will blend in, angels disguised as demons on their journey to the center of hell to slay the devil.

"Never underestimate the power of a brilliant stylist," he says. If it's still physically possible, he may have just made Tigris blush.

…

They set out, they separate and say goodbye. Katniss uncuffs him. He rubs his wrists. Flexes them. Steadies his resolve. He will follow her. He will make her safe. No matter what. It's what he does.

"Listen, don't do anything foolish." She says, and she's saying so much more. Goodbye. I'm sorry. Regrets that don't have words, cares that she can't voice.

"No. It's last-resort stuff. Completely," he says. And he means only goodbye, and to reassure her so she doesn't change her mind.

And then her arms are like a vise around his neck. He's not as quick to return her embrace, but when he does he folds her in close, into his heart. Feels her arms like the walls of home. He wants her to feel the same in his. She belongs there, in his arms. He remembers. It hurts. But it helps. "All right, then." She says, as she releases him. It's another goodbye.

"It's time," says Tigris.

It is time for things to end.


	14. Everything Burns

The pain is different than any pain he's felt before. There's no beginning and no end; he floats through it with no hope of relief. Three words whisper over and over again to keep him from completely spinning out of his mind. It's the question she asked him. It's an anchor and a lifeline to his real self. Light flickers beyond his eyelids and he starts to receive and process sensations from the outside world again. The smell of antiseptic. Fluorescent light. Moisture. Pain. The sensation of being wrapped and unwrapped and stretched and sewn back together. He is broken. He remembers now. He is a mutt. But now even more than before, if that is possible. Nothing is sure. And every sound is dampened and remote, like his ears are stuffed with wax. Except the sounds that come from his own throat that echo through his bones. It doesn't take long for him to lose his voice, but he still screams. He still forces air through his raw and bleeding vocal chords, trying to make them vibrate. Eventually they give him some kind of targeted muscle relaxer. He can push and pull air through his throat, he can swallow, but he can't make the muscles that stretch the chords contract.

Something familiar and warm seeps through his veins that takes away the sharpest edges of his pain, washes him out, makes him numb. Morphling. He doesn't like it. It is not a natural feeling. It's murky and sticky as opposed to shiny and disjointed, but it is definitely a chemical alteration that makes him uncomfortable even as it gives him relief from the pain. He has visitors, but his eyes don't work properly. There's a blond halo that might be Delly. The smell of alcohol and worry. He thinks he hears Katniss once, but when he opens his eyes it's the same endless parade of impersonal pink orbs that are not talking to him anyway. About him, endlessly. But not to him. He keeps seeing a long dark braid snaked around a pink orb's shoulder, but when he tries to focus on the face everything wiggles and fuzzes out. He knows it's not her. He watched her burn.

Dr. Aurelius introduces himself as soon as Peeta is conscious and aware enough to help them in the assessment of his own brain. The tests are endlessly boring and seem to take a ridiculous amount of time. He gets impatient. Dr. Aurelius nods and writes something on his notepad. He spends some claustrophobic time holding still in a clicking tube watching patterns bloom and whirl and morph across a screen. When they ask him to recount his memories from those last horrible days; he is surprised to find he has a voice. Just what he can remember. No pressure. If he needs to stop they can stop at any time, Dr. Aurelius assures him. There are gaps, but the doctor doesn't seem concerned. "Perfectly normal, my boy." Is all he says. Peeta thinks that Dr. Aurelius would be the kind of man to pat him on the shoulder reassuringly if he weren't covered in fragile new skin. He is a delicate flower. The image makes him laugh, for some reason.

His test results come back. His mind is still malleable. They still have "challenges" to overcome, but the signs are promising. He can still be perfectly functional. In other words not the same as how he had been, but maybe he won't try to kill anyone.

"There's so much we don't know about the brain, and we haven't done much work with hijacked patients." says Dr. Aurelius. "Your team in 13 seem to think they've broken new ground."

"I'm a real pioneer." Peeta shrugs.

"Ah, a sense of humor. Good. Good. Well." The doctor makes a note, pats himself on the thigh and leaves without any further discussion.

In the following weeks he remembers more and more. The real or not real game is good, they'll keep that. All in all, Aurelius seems to think it's promising that he's started to remember who he was before the Capitol took him; that he was able to control his episodes using pain. They'll work on finding something besides pain as a focus.

He asks about her at last, but Aurelius is vague. She's alive. She's gone through the same kind of treatment he has for her burns. Something breaks inside his chest but he can't tell if it's from anger, or relief that she's alive, or his empathy for their twin pain. His last memory of her is clear. They were in the circle, in front of Snow's Mansion. He lost sight of her in the crowd, he panicked. Then suddenly: an explosion. Then smoke, blood, the screams of children. He spotted her a few feet ahead, she was intact but she looked frozen to the spot, staring at something straight ahead. A second later, a bright flash lit up everything. A loud noise. Time slowed almost to a stop and he saw the silhouette of her body in midair, her face in profile, arms up, braid flying. In agonizing slow motion, she was airborne and coming towards him engulfed in a wall of fire, but she was not close enough to reach. It was only a split second before he was hit with the same fire, but it had seemed like an eternity. Unbearable brightness, the pressure of the heat wave, then darkness; more smoke. When the brightness hit he'd reflexively thrown his hands up to his face to shield his eyes. He vaguely remembers trying to get to her, but he couldn't find her, everything looked the same. Black and smoking. Was that real? He has no idea. He has no one to ask. He considers asking if there is footage he can reference but he's nowhere near ready for that. He wonders why they make him relive these things if there is footage. But he knows why.

With the reconstruction of his body complete except for the healing, the work turns to his head. It's painful and frustrating. Thankfully there's no need to reverse hijack him because he is now able to mostly identify the shiny memories. Separating them from the real memories is the trick. It might be easier to grow wings. The shiny memories are difficult to fight, they leave him emotionally bereft and tired. Once they've started, they don't stop until every false detail is forced on him. It's like a seizure. From the outside, it's as if he's just staring off into space, eyes dilated and glassed over. If it's bad his body twitches and they have to hold him down. Or he has uncontrollable rages; Mutt Peeta takes over his body and makes it do and say things he doesn't remember. They've started recording these to show him. Or maybe they've always recorded them and they're only just showing him now. His treatment team wants to minimize the rages because of his papery patchwork skin. He has a whole team now, not just Dr. Aurelius. Team Peeta.

During one of his sessions he has a massive flood of memories. Images invade his mind all at once; the video feeds, the wires, the glow, the people in white and the prongs they used to keep his lids open when he refused to watch. The steady drip of saline to keep his vision functioning. The terrible constant urge to blink. The buzzing. He'd been isolated then, confined to a glowing white cell. He thinks it was designed to deprive him of sleep. Sometimes they'd inject him, and sometimes if they were feeling particularly sweet, like the very first time, they'd send in the required number of live tracker jackers to achieve the dose they needed. They didn't even bother to remove the prongs from his eyes.

He remembers the constant rotating screams of his friends. He knows Johanna was the closest, but he couldn't see her, only hear her. Effie in her cotton gown with her pale skin and faraway eyes. Annie's coral bloodstains. Enobaria's eyes as she leaves them. Two prisoners they didn't know who tried to hold hands through the bars, around the wall between them. Without warning, a tech had arrived and chopped them both off. Then he threw them each something to tie off their limb and the other prisoner's hand. No one else tried it.

Aurelius and the team give him a few days off after that. They have a lot of notes to write anyway, the doctor says. They take him to the hospital atrium and give him a large sketch pad, some soft charcoal, and some non-toxic ink. He'll have to paint with his fingers for now, until they know he won't hurt himself. They keep asking, but he can't make any promises yet. He starts with flowers. Huge blossoms of orange and red with slim black stamens. Then the hijack visions. Horrors, both real and implanted. He paints Katniss for an entire week. Some he thinks are good likenesses of the real Katniss. Some he knows are not. He paints Delly laughing; Prim's wide blue-violet eyes, her sympathetic smile. Johanna grinning manically at him in the dining hall. Finnick's arm draped protectively around Annie. Jackson and Leeg1 at the Meat Grinder, saying goodbye with their eyes. Pollux and Castor speaking with their hands. Homes threatening to knock him out and carry him. Pollux weeping soundlessly by the fireplace in the dead woman's apartment. Cressida's vines, Messalla's tattoos and Tigris. He paints his family. They're small remote figures, standing in the distance in front of the bakery. He paints himself into the picture. They smile, they hold hands. They look happy.

He makes progress sorting out more and more hijacked memories. Cataloguing them in paintings. Team Peeta uses a combination of therapies on him; including medication, relaxation, and reprogramming. The last involves identifying a terrible memory or event; then a lot of talking and moving his eyes back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. It's tedious work.

When he is able to get up and around on his own, he is confined to the hospital secured wing as standard procedure. Within a short amount of time he clears the security check and is provided a small suite in a building adjacent to the hospital and allowed to come and go as long as he keeps his appointments. He feels incomplete. Aurelius is hopeful that he will recover all his faculties eventually; but it's a frustrating, depressing feeling. It makes him angry. He is not a depressive person. Something in his nature pushes up hard against it. Burns it away. The darkest feelings he has are like shadows of spoken words. They feel wrong and virtually impossible to explain. It's unnatural. The universe just doesn't work that way.


	15. Assassination

When he shows Dr. Aurelius his paintings they break the news to him about Prim. He has a mutt episode. An inconsolable rage. He has to be sedated. It is unfair, it is tragic, but it's not unusual. To the the people who hadn't known her she is just one more life to add to the cost of the war. But he knows that for Katniss, this wipes out everything she tried to save, everything she fought for. Everything she knew she loved. Everyone is grieving for someone or something. From their way of life, to families, to entire districts. He is grieving for them all. He can't help it. Mutt Peeta still wants him to believe it's all his fault. Prim is the feather that breaks his back. Dr. Aurelius reassures him that he is responding in completely normal, healthy ways... considering. He'll be fine, as long as there are no more big surprises. And even then, he'd come so far. He'd be fine. If it wasn't too bad. Aurelius assured him he'd look out for him.

But they live in interesting times and an unpredictable world. The soldiers arrive at his apartment one day and put him in a car without offering an explanation. He asks. A meeting, they tell him. President's orders. Aurelius cleared it. They produce the paperwork to prove it. They take him to a room with a round table and a screen. Haymitch is there, looking haggard but sober. Johanna, Beetee, Annie and Enobaria arrive shortly. They all know that today is Snow's execution day, but other than that no one knows what they are doing there, in that room. Katniss arrives. He hasn't seen her since the explosion. He is shocked. She looks scarred and drawn, defensive and confused. The confused part finally registers. It means she doesn't know what they're doing here either.

It doesn't take long to find out. Coin wants them to decide whether or not to hold another Hunger Games. With Capitol children. He can't believe it. After everything they've been through, every person in that room irreparably scarred by the Games. He hopes this is a horrible joke. But the President is serious. There is to be a vote. He votes no. Of course, no. Annie votes no. Beetee votes no as well. Johanna and Enobaria -who have always been more susceptible to vengeance- vote yes. That leaves Katniss and Haymitch.

Katniss is quiet for a long moment; he can see the wheels turning in her head. She places her vote.

"Yes. For Prim," she says.

Who is this person? He was beginning to think he knew who she was, now he's unsure who she has become. He is disappointed, furious. He clenches his scarred hands reflexively, they itch and his skin is tight in unfamiliar ways. It's Haymitch's turn. Peeta exhausts every argument he has. Not that Haymitch didn't already know them. It's for himself, he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he hadn't spoken. It helps that he believes what he's saying. He pounds the table. Haymitch and Katniss make eye contact. It's a look that Peeta has come to recognize as their brains moving in sync, silent communication and understanding between the two of them. She is making her case. And she wins.

He is furious. Livid. He supposes that in her fresh grief, revenge for Prim's death seems like something that will ease the pain. He doesn't agree, it will be a hollow victory. With victims, just like they are. Most importantly, it won't bring Prim back. But Haymitch? His wounds are deep, but they're old. What can he possibly get out of another Games that he can't get at the bottom of a bottle? None of it adds up in his head. Except he doesn't trust his head so much anymore. There has to be something he's missing, and it happened between those two.

The time comes for the execution. The remaining tributes are required to be there. He can only imagine that Dr. Aurelius tried to make some kind of case for his absence, with the risk of triggering an episode. He imagines that Coin simply didn't care. Aurelius would be right to protest his presence, his emotions are fast approaching critical mass. Along with Katniss, Snow will be there. He is still livid over the vote. He can feel his focus slipping. Stress is one of his triggers. Breathe, he tells himself. In through the nose, out through the mouth. But he's still slipping. There's a wall behind him and he holds on, hoping to keep himself upright. Then he's locked into his vision.

It's a flood of images and fear. Danger. There's danger. Katniss. Danger. She's dangerous. No. NO. She is in danger. She is dangerous. A mutt. NO. He fights for control of his own mind. When he regains focus on the world outside his head again, she is there on the terrace. With her bow and her single arrow. In the state he's in, he feels her presence like a lightning rod. He is the lightning, trying not to strike. He forces himself to breathe again, and again. He digs his nails deep into the skin around the scars on his wrist. The pain snaps him back into focus. His emotions settle, but they're still stirred. Guards bring out Snow and he digs his fingernails in deeper. A single trickle of blood makes its way down one of his fingers, drops to the ground. Snow is secured to a post. Katniss draws her bow.

His eyes are riveted on her inscrutable face. He shakes his head. Two thoughts are competing for dominance. Is she beautiful? He wonders as she pulls back the string. Slight and deadly and broken, definitely. Her scars are mostly covered but he can still see them, they're much like his own. He remembers thinking she was beautiful. Feeling it down to his bones. She aims. Those feelings belong to Old Peeta. He also remembers telling her she wasn't particularly pretty. That thought belongs to his ugly hijacked self. The self that is so very angry at her, hates her, knows that she will never be his to kiss or to kill. He's grasping at something buried deep that slips away from him every time he touches it. It's on the tip of his tongue. The tip of his heart. But he can't reach it. Is he supposed to love her or hate her? Either way, she is important to him.

He is staring at her thinking these thoughts when she turns her bow upward and President Coin falls from the sky. As the guards converge, his body moves independent of thought. He knows instinctively what she's going to do next. He has to get to her. He has to stop her. His hand clamps down on her sleeve as she tries to free and swallow the tiny pill. Her teeth sink into his new skin, the pain like ice water in his veins. He has never had a clearer moment that he can remember. His eyes track and lock onto hers, and she rages at him. "Let me go!" she screams, her eyes spit fire that finds its target. His heart explodes like a time bomb.

"I can't." he says. I never will. He thinks.

Uniformed arms wrench her from him, but his fingers catch the pocket just in time. The pill spins unclaimed in the air and is lost in the fray of panicked feet.

She's screaming for Gale. Begging him to shoot her. Peeta looks around, and for one terrible moment he considers that Gale might actually follow through with their pact. Until he finds the face he knows standing perfectly still in the sea of panic, wearing a mixture of grief and pride. Gale is proud of her. And he is letting her go. The Mockingjay's last mission is complete.

Now Gale can begin the real work of the revolution, work that is almost custom tailored to suit his interests and abilities. He'll make a lovely politician. He knows the last remaining shreds of the girl from the Seam disintegrated the moment she whispered her bow to sleep. Katniss of the woods is gone. The Mockingjay, gone. Gale won't have the patience for what she is now anyway. He can't do what she's going to need. To survive. That is if she isn't executed for what she just did. Gale ducks his head and fades into the hysterical crowd. He can't even watch. Peeta doesn't know if he blames him, pities him or loathes him. One thing is certain: Gale is never coming back for her.

It takes awhile for him to work out what their plan was, hers and Haymitch's. The two of them with their twin minds hatched a plan without even blinking. The pieces didn't all fall into place until he heard the rumors. Who ordered the bomb that scarred her, scarred him, and taken Prim's life.

"For Prim." The words echo in his head over and over again. He understands now.

He believes it's possible, likely, and he believes that she would believe it. She must have had more to go on than rumors. It makes more sense than anything he'd thought of. Dr. Aurelius agrees. Haymitch confirms his suspicions. There is to be an investigation, and a committee formed to present evidence to. He has little faith that anything will come of that, but who knows. The President is an honest person and politician but administrations are complicated and inevitably the power plays have already started.

Peeta asks if he can see her. But she's a Presidential assassin, on lockdown to await her fate. No visitors. No contact outside her old training center room at all, human or otherwise. He tries not to think about her. Alone, in pain. No doubt trying to finish what she started with the nightlock pill. He tries hard. But she's all he can think about. He feels like he's going to split in two, right down the middle. The only question is along which fault line.


	16. Trials

He continues his work with Dr. Aurelius, not knowing what will happen to either of them. The trial takes a long time. It's televised, of course. Sometimes he's glued to it, sometimes he stays in bed and waits for someone to tell him what's happening. He keeps hoping that she'll appear, though Aurelius has told him many times she's not in any condition to be seen in public, let alone help in her defense. He's not supposed to talk about it to Peeta, but he does anyway. He passes him notes, since their sessions are recorded and nearly everything they do is monitored still. Old habits are hard to break, apparently. And trust is in short supply. Aurelius slips them into his required reading, in between the volumes on dealing with physical trauma through physical activity and dealing with emotional trauma through the expressive arts. He's never sure where he's being monitored, but he's still relatively sure that they watch everything he does. Even in the bathroom. He's long over being used to it. So many of the major events of his life have been on camera, on display to the whole country. But he doesn't want to get Aurelius into trouble, so he is careful.

She's not well. Addicted to morphling and in isolation. But she's still alive. There's no way for him to help her, Aurelius is doing everything he can. Haymitch fills him in on all the legalese.

He is assigned volumes of reading on letting go of the things he can't control. But he still worries. He still has feelings. His issues keep him busy. He sees Johanna more often. And Annie. Poor, pregnant Annie. The three of them spend long hours in front of the television watching the trial, during the times that they can't not watch. They discuss the dry points, the issues. But they steer clear of the emotional landmines. Haymitch and Effie join them sometimes. They're inseparable these days. Effie needs a lot. After she was taken into custody by Snow's people, her family disappeared. "Things happen during wars," she says. But beyond that she won't talk about it, and Haymitch gives them strict instructions not to even go near it. None of them have the energy or the will. Even Johanna can't be bothered to poke at Effie.

"It's no fun," she says, and shrugs. "She gets so weepy, it's gross."

She needles Haymitch occasionally, but most of the mania has gone out of her fight these days. She's unbearably grouchy, but that he can handle. Annie has a much harder time with it, and he's learned how to talk her back out of her head, after some practice. But to Johanna's credit she does try when Annie's around, when it's just the three of them. They've made a kind of peace he never would have thought they could, considering how different they are and how differently they deal with their feelings. Sometimes she even holds Annie's hand while they're watching the trial, and he doesn't look, let alone ever mention it. There's a painfully raw vulnerability about it, so it's difficult to look at anyway. But they both get what they need out of it, and he likes that they trust him enough to let him witness their needs for affection. Johanna gets a mother's hand to hold, and Annie needs any kind of comfort. They never push his limits, and he's happy about that as well. Any kind of touch is painful for him, for so many reasons. He's getting better, but he still feels like he has no kind of skin at all.

Haymitch and Effie are not any more comfortable to be around, but in a completely different way. The light is slowly coming back into Effie's eyes, as some of the artifice disappears, while at the same time the distance closes between the two of them. The time she sidles up to him and nearly into his lap it's too much for Johanna.

"Oh please! Will you two get a room? Or should we just leave? Oh wait, it's Peeta's house. You should definitely get a room," She says. "Not very proper, Effie." Johanna winks at her as she plops down next to Peeta, drink in hand. Effie huffs and slides away from Haymitch, but their hands stay together. It's all new for Haymitch. His discomfort with even semi-public affection is almost comical to watch, unlike Johanna and Annie. He is very much out of practice. But they seem to be that kind of couple that compliments one another, instead of conflicting. They understand how things are done in the Capitol, even now with all the changes. Haymitch understands her, and her grief. Effie doesn't try to make him stop drinking. They're just as damaged as everyone else, filling each other's gaping holes. Peeta is surrounded by unlikely couples, and none of them are in any position to judge each other. They do what works to get by.

But it makes him ache for Katniss. She has always been at least been visually accessible. He feels her absence like part of him is missing, in a way that he hasn't felt for a long time. Since the days when Snow first took him, the days when his body missed hers so badly, when his heart said her name every time it moved his blood around again, and again, and again. Rerouting his thoughts of her through his other organs, the one in particular. He misses her face, and her strength. Even when he hated her he knew her strength, and had pushed up against it. He feels the lack of resistance and support. He has no tether but memory, and his memory is full of holes and lies.

When they can't watch, they eat, or avoid talking about anything painful. They all exercise. A lot. Except Annie, who is only cleared for walking. And Haymitch, who promises terrible things to the first person to make him try.

The trial is interminable. There are at least ten different camera angles of the event explored at length. He gets to watch his face over and over as she tries to leave the world. Suicidal. Driven by war and grief to madness. Scarred beyond hope. Expert after expert testifies. Aurelius testifies. Plutarch testifies. Plutarch obviously enjoys testifying. But no one expects any less from him. Then it's over.

She is to be confined until further notice in District Twelve. Haymitch is required to be there with her, as her guardian. When Peeta hears this, he knows that is where he will end up too. But Dr. Aurelius won't clear him for travel until they're sure he is fit and can handle what being in District Twelve with Katniss will mean for him. And for her.


	17. Return

It is difficult for him to be with or without her, in the awkward weeks and months that follow his return to District Twelve.

He arrives in the afternoon on an early Spring day. He took the overnight train from the Capitol as soon as Dr. Aurelius gave him clearance, but he finds it difficult to sleep. He chalked it up to nervousness, but in his room memories plague him. He tries to make sense of them as he wanders.

He has a big breakfast on the train, and he stops at the makeshift market near the provisional housing area for basic supplies. He walks through town, which leaves him heartsick and haunted. He makes his way to the Victor's Village, finds his house, and dissolves into his dusty bed.

He wakes up at dusk and checks for signs of life at Haymitch' and Katniss's houses. There are a few. Haymitch has a light on on the upper floor, but that could mean anything. He stays up late and sleeps through the day, or he sleeps with the lights on. Katniss's windows are mostly dark, but he makes out the faint warm flicker of firelight. Which means someone is there, someone is tending a fire, someone needs to stay warm, the nights are still cold. The mystery is partially solved when Greasy Sae comes and goes. She enters with food and supplies, and leaves without, so he assumes that Sae is in charge of making sure Katniss eats. And stays warm, judging by the renewed glow of the firelight. He is nervous. The last time he'd seen Katniss was Snow's execution (he supposes he can still call it that, because Snow did actually die there, but not by any specific person's hand), where he'd thwarted her suicide attempt. The time before that, he watched her explode. He doesn't know what state she is currently in. If she needs a cook, it's probably not good.

He calls Dr. Aurelius to check in and report. He is fine, he's still tired. He needs some things. Baking supplies that are nowhere to be found in Twelve. Refined sugar and flour that doesn't have the texture of a breakfast grain. Canvases, paint. There is no art supply store here, there never has been. He'd made his own canvases before, out of spare lumber and leftover canvas he'd had to trade for. Charcoal had been in plentiful supply, graphite and ink was gettable, but decent paint was almost impossible to come by. He managed to create about three paintings in secret his whole adolescence. One of the town, one of a sunset, and one of Katniss. They had been tucked under his bed at his parent's apartment over the bakery when he was reaped, lost forever in the bombing. He'd expected maybe his mother would find them and throw them away, or maybe his brothers would find them and laugh before they threw them away, or maybe his father would find them and put them somewhere else. It doesn't matter now. They are gone. All of them. Everything. He would have liked to see the paintings again, to remember how he saw her when his love for her was sure and steady. Both of these thoughts make his breath catch, a hard sob ready to surface if he'll let it. But he doesn't. He cried enough when he'd come through town earlier. Something had been bothering him, and he finally put it together that day. He wonders if Gale had tried to save his family. Probably not. They were in town, they were not from the Seam. Gale may have considered their loss unfortunate after the fact, may have even mourned them in general along with many others. But Peeta doubted it had crossed Gale's mind to save them when the moment arrived. He wondered how Delly had made it out with her brother. In the self-centered haze of his hijacking he had never thought to ask.

He informs the doctor of the small signs of life at Katniss's house and is instructed to make sure someone makes her pick up the phone. She won't like the consequences if she doesn't. Peeta reminds him that she probably doesn't care. Nevertheless, he can't keep filling out reports with completely fictional material. People with the power to order her execution if she violates the terms of her incarceration could take notice. And though he knows Aurelius will never let it come to that, he promises to talk to Greasy Sae about it in the morning. If not Katniss. He isn't sure what he will do yet. He just wants to see her. Might as well admit it, he tells himself. He needs to see her.

He showers his patchwork body and goes to bed, semi-content with the situation. The only problem he has is the abject terror in his gut at the thought of seeing her. He doesn't know what to expect. Outright rejection, attack, indifference… Little Peeta even hopes she might be happy to see him. He doesn't plan on seeing her, but he prepares himself for every possibility. He is going to her house. It needs to be done. He thinks about the flickering but silent house and Mrs. Everdeen and Prim, and how it used to be full of life and love. Even if the circumstances were sometimes difficult and tragic.

Prim. He remembers when he was told that Prim was there. There. In the explosion that had made his stitched together outside match his stitched together inside.

Prim. Tiny Prim, whom Katniss saved from Reaping. The person she knew she loved more than anything else. Prim's survival was Katniss's only goal for so long. Prim had still seemed so young and innocent when she visited him in Thirteen during his recovery. But also smart and determined. Capable. She'd seen more blood and pain than any thirteen year old should. It was her idea to reverse hijack him. She'd held his twitchy hand as they gave him the morphling, told him stories of her sister, answered his questions. He remembers wondering how someone as frightening and inhuman as Katniss could love and be loved by this tiny luminous girl.

"But she is human," Prim had told him over and over. It was strange to hear the words come out of such a young person. They didn't seem unreal, or too earnest. Just...true. "She is human. And she loves you, Peeta. She won't admit it, even to herself, but she loves you. I know her, and I'm telling you the truth. What she told you is true too. They used you to break her. They took away the thing she didn't know she needed until it was gone. Your love. You." Prim, who told him how much Katniss loved her, how Katniss had kept her alive when their mother couldn't. How Katniss volunteered at the Reaping for her (he remembered that, but she had been tainted by a false motivation), how Katniss worked so hard to keep everyone safe, how she had saved all of them without even thinking about it, over and over.

Once they were past his initial (and subsequent) arguments he couldn't find anything in his heart or head that said otherwise. So he trusted her. Prim's words had brought him back to himself, too many times to count. Given him hope. Prim. Soft as a flower; stubborn as a thorn. Unwilling to give up on him, and unwilling to let anyone else give up on him either. Her words had stuck, echoed in his head wherever he was. She is human. She loves you. As he remembers her, he knows what he has to do in the morning.

For Prim.

And for himself, and for Katniss. Whether she likes it or not.


	18. Primroses

He wakes early, before dawn. Gathers a shovel and a wheelbarrow and heads out into the woods to find them. A monument. A memorial. For her. He steels himself as he wheels them back into town, into the Victor's Village and into Katniss's yard. There's no sound from inside her house, and he sighs with relief.

But before he can finish digging the holes to plant them in, he hears the door open and she skids to a stop in her socks as she comes into view around the house.

"You're back." She says, her face haunted and wild and bewildered.

"Dr. Aurelius wouldn't let me leave the Capitol until yesterday," he says. "By the way," he considers how to phrase Aurelius's vague warning innocuously, "He says he can't keep pretending to treat you forever. You have to pick up the phone." She doesn't laugh, like he'd hoped. Or even smile. She looks absolutely feral. He remembers Snow's execution, how he wondered whether she was beautiful or not. He decides right now that she is. Her hair is matted and she looks like she's been wearing the same clothes for awhile. She's a mess, she's definitely in need of Dr. Aurelius and a shower, but she is beautiful. She notices him noticing and pushes her hair out of her eyes, crosses her arms over her chest and raises her defenses. She scowls. It's almost comforting, to see such a familiar expression.

"What are you doing?" she finally spits at him. But there's no malice behind her words. She's all bark, at least for today.

Here's where he will find out if his gesture has toed the line or bulldozed over it completely.

"I went to the woods this morning and dug these up. For her. I thought we could plant them along the side of the house." He cringes inwardly at his pronoun use. She doesn't seem to notice though. She's eyeing the bushes suspiciously. Rage flashes across her face and he thinks she's going to start screaming but she doesn't. Her features soften suddenly and she gives him a tight lipped nod. She runs back into the house and he hears the distinct click of the lock. Then a distant thud, and a few minutes later the sound of breaking glass. That can't mean anything good, or maybe it does. Destruction can mean a level playing field, a fresh start. He's becoming an expert on that. As he plants the first primrose he hears the sound of windows opening on the upper floor. Either she's watching him or she needs air- he doesn't bother to speculate any further. She's in worse shape than he'd hoped. There's no point in guessing what she's going through. Without a doubt, it's a lot. He'll just have to be patient. With her, and with himself.

Greasy Sae shows up as he's finishing. She nods at him, shaking her head a bit. She doesn't seem surprised, but not much has ever thrown her.

He crosses his arms on the shovel and wipes the sweat from his scars. "How's she doing?"

Sae shrugs. "She's been better, that's for sure. Some days she eats, some days she don't. I can't make her do anything she don't want to. You know that girl. Stubborn as a mule." she grins. "But maybe she'll get up outta that chair now you're back." Her eyes twinkle and she sizes him up. Winks. "How are you doin'? Those Capitol docs got you all fixed up?"

"Something like that." he says. "But I'm actually participating in my treatment." He smiles a little. Greasy Sae chuckles under her breath and lets herself in.

He retrieves some water, soaks the primroses and inspects his work. They'll be lovely when they bloom. Of course they're a pale shadow of the girl, but it eases his heart for now. Katniss has accepted them, if not exactly him. He has seen her now. She's still under there, under layers and layers of instinct and scar tissue.

He doesn't have a plan. He doesn't even really know how he feels, there is so much inside grappling for his attention. Relief, sadness, grief, regret, anger, confusion, love, hate…hope.

He skirts the edges of her life. Maintains distance, but always aware of her presence or lack of presence wherever he is. His days begin to blend together. He walks through the town to keep from staring at her windows. He weeps at what's left of the bakery, for his family. His old life. If he hadn't been reaped would he have been there? Would things have happened the same way? No one else he can think of would have been so determined to keep her alive; except maybe Gale, but had he volunteered her family would have suffered and she never would have forgiven him for choosing her over them. Would there still have been a revolution? A Mockingjay? Would she have won? Would he be here at a bakery still standing, grieving for the girl with the braid? Waiting for the next reaping?

The details of District Twelve he once assumed were permanent or at the very least durable have been obliterated. He keeps busy and paints as much as he can remember. His father's hands working dough or artfully laying out fruit in a tart. The crinkles around his eyes when he laughed. His mother's face at the end of a busy day: the tiny moment of relief where she let her guard down between exhaustion and her preparations for the next day. His brothers wrestling, the apple tree in early summer, spring piglets, his old room. Memories that had been his alone flood through him. Delly had helped him confirm so much of their childhood. He still calls her if he gets hung up on something. She is always good about it. Kind. Sweet. Uncomplicated. But she is perceptive enough to call him on things, if she needs to. Haymitch on a good day confirms details adults would have known, if he had been sober enough to pay attention to them. He begins to trust those memories. Primarily because most of them had nothing to do with Katniss.

He paints to remember, and to distract himself. Forget that she's there but not there for him. That she's in so much fierce, angry pain that he can't look at her without feeling an old wound open, a burst of conflicting emotions. She bristles with hurt. She's a wounded predator. Pitiful but dangerous. A growing part of him aches to hold her and take some of her pain on himself despite the dangers, both real and unreal. No one denies that Real Katniss's first instinct is to lash out and push people away when she's hurting. Mutt Peeta takes perverse glee in seeing her suffer. When Mutt Peeta makes an appearance he retreats to his empty house disoriented or dysfunctional. He calls Dr. Aurelius or someone from his team when he can't handle things himself. Sometimes he goes to see Haymitch. Even going on a liquor run helps shrink the ringing hollowness inside him to a manageable size.

He asks about her, and Haymitch just rolls his eyes and says "Go over there and see for yourself, boy. If she bites you just try to keep it from hitting an artery. Blood makes me…" Haymitch shudders and swallows hard. "Just go before I vomit." So he goes.

He peeks his head through her front door. He's chosen a time when he knows Greasy Sae is there, just in case.

"Katniss?" He opens the door and calls awkwardly when no one answers his knock. "Katniss? Hello?"

She appears, startled, from around a corner. "Oh, hi." She looks better, but tired. She still has that wild eyed stare, but she's recovering some of her hunter's stealth.

"I just came by to say…" What did he come by to say? Right. "To see how you are."

"I'm fine." Her smile is tight and doesn't reach her eyes.

"I'm glad," he says.

"How are you?" She looks at him in that way that she studies prey. Assessing his likeliness to bolt. "I mean, how does Dr. Aurelius think you're doing? He keeps telling me to go outside."

"Not the worst I've ever been." He shrugs. "I'm alive."

"Me too." She says. She frowns.

Greasy Sae's gravelly voice comes from the kitchen. "Are you staying for breakfast Peeta?" Katniss looks like Sae suggested dinner, dancing and candlelight. "It's about time you came by!" Katniss's cheeks flush bright pink. Maybe he should have waited until Greasy Sae had left.

"I don't have to." He whispers, his hands waving her off preemptively. "Really. It's okay."

"No. Stay." There's something in her voice. Shyness? Certainly she's guarded. But there's something else. He's not good at reading her face. He can figure out how to placate a crowd, how to make up a story and make it believable in the blink of an eye, but he still can't get past her masks unless she takes them off or they fall away of their own accord.

They have breakfast that day in mostly silence. When they do speak it's to ask for the salt, or ask about Haymitch. Greasy Sae slips quietly out the front door when they're not looking.

His visits become a habit. It's awkward at first. But after a few weeks it slips into comfortable routine. He visits for a few minutes to drop off some bread or whatever he is currently playing with in his oven. She warms up slowly. Looks at him less suspiciously.

She's making an attempt at what Dr. Aurelius calls "faking it until you're making it." Which Peeta can almost never say with a straight face. "I can hear that look on your face, you know. I know, it's a stupid phrase. It's supposed to be a pneumonic device." The doctor sighs audibly. "Just try it. Go through the motions. Do what you think healthy Peeta would do. Act as if you're fine, as if you're completely functional. At some point you may find that you are."

Eventually she offers to let him stay for more than five minutes. Starts conversations. They have meals together. Breakfast at first, when he'd drop off bread. Or dinner, if one of them has a bad night and needs to sleep it off. Greasy Sae stops coming by to cook, and on nights they don't feel like making food they go down to the makeshift cafeteria Sae's set up to feed the cleanup crews. The town starts to feel like a community again, despite the temporary housing and the still-scorched earth.

When Katniss proposes the idea of the book, it seems like a natural extension of what he started with his painting. He needs to participate. He needs to remember the real people and the real things, to put them down on paper and cement them back into his heart and mind. Katniss helps him remember the things he can't, and he trusts her memories more and more. Sometimes he can't finish a sketch or a drawing because his hands shake, or his eyes can't focus through the tears. Sometimes he is suddenly aware of her hand on his shoulder and her voice softly saying his name as he white knuckles his way out of an episode. Likewise he finds her bent over a page sometimes, shoulders shaking, words flowing. He lets her finish and then they talk about it, if they can. It feels good, to vow to make life worth living. To not let their sacrifices have been in vain. To not forget. Having been robbed of so much of his memory, the process is difficult but worth it and the results are precious.

Someone reports to Dr. Aurelius that they've start to develop dark circles under their eyes. The doctor warns him about the dangers of sleep deprivation. That he can have a serious setback if he continues to not sleep. He knows she isn't getting any sleep either. He wakes up in the middle of the night unsure of where he is, and sometimes even who he is. When his old dreams about losing her resurface, he can't get back to sleep until he sees her and knows she's safe. From him, from everything. Dr. Aurelius has given him an arsenal of defenses against Hijacked Peeta, but not against Old Peeta's fears. So he just doesn't get back to sleep.

They check on Haymitch together mid-afternoon usually before starting in on the book, which always provides a source of either amusement or irritation. But it's something new to talk about. A shared experience that doesn't trigger any mental landmines. He still dreams of Mutt Katniss. But he also dreams of this new Katniss. His body still has a mind of its own for her, and his brain is catching up quickly. He has an easier time separating the real and the mutt. New Katniss is who he sees most often now when he looks at her face. Not the duplicitous, dangerous sharp toothed vision that ghosts over her features on bad days. He can make Mutt Katniss go away now. He knows she isn't real, but sometimes she feels real for a second that can seem like an eternity. It's frightening, it's exhausting. He is a natural early riser, so when he can't get out of bed until noon it feels completely wrong.

He finds himself wishing she was there when he wakes. To be exasperated or petulant or sad or helpful, even comforting. The possibility isn't foreign anymore. It feels right, it feels good, when she helps him out of an episode. He sees more and more of her kindness and vulnerability.

But she's not always there when he needs her, and that sets him back. Why isn't she there when you need her? Mutt Peeta asks him. It nags at him. He knows perfectly well why. He knows he still doesn't absolutely trust himself. Dr. Aurelius says he probably never will. He'll always be a bit hesitant, he'll always have to jump the identity hurdle. But that hurdle might get smaller, the doctor says.

He also knows that she shrinks from things now instead of raging at them. Instead of daring them to fight. He wants to see her fight again, to see her fire. Just to prove that that Katniss was ever real.


	19. Windows

"Katniss," he starts one day while they were working on the book. He has tried to be still and let her work; she looks tired. But he is restless that day and brimming with unanswered questions dug up by his dreams. "Do you remember back in the Capitol with Boggs and Jackson, before we had to run, when you were guarding me?"

"Mm hmm." she doesn't look up, she's focused on the writing something about Foxface.

"Do you remember… telling me things about myself? That I like to bake, double knot my shoelaces, that stuff."

"Yes." she still doesn't look up, but her pen is suddenly quiet in her hand.

"How did you know I like sleeping with the windows open?"

There hadn't been a window to open at the Training Center for security reasons, and there hadn't been windows in their rooms on the train. The train moved too fast to just open a direct vent to the outside. Instead air was redirected, filtered and slowed down behind the scenes before it reached them. There was an open air car, but it was an impressive feat of engineering that included force fields. No train that transports tributes would have an open air car without precautions, even on the Victory Tour the train had security. For their protection, they said, but they knew it went both ways. For a minute he doesn't think she is going to answer. He prepares to go back to sketching. He doesn't want to press her. But she answers.

"Because…" she stops, then starts again "You remember how we didn't speak for months after we came back home the first time? After I… after we had that conversation about what had happened… between us. And my part." She can't bring herself to say it, even after all this time, he thinks. Had it bothered her? It must have, judging by how uncomfortable she is. Maybe she is just trying to spare his feelings. She doesn't need to worry about that. Resentment constricts his chest a little.

"I do, I think. You told me that you were pretending to love me." The tightness in his chest pushes out the words, with more bile than he intends. He knows he has worked this out with her before, but he doesn't remember it very well. It's so difficult when you have to fight your battles twice. He knows why she did what she did, he knows why it was unfair of him to expect that she was doing anything but surviving. They had talked about it. They had strategized about it from the beginning. Broken things. Well, she had. With his body. But his feelings are so much closer to the surface now, since the hijacking. Sometimes they slip through.

"Not the whole time," she says it so softly that he almost doesn't hear her. She is pathetic, plaintive. Her head is still down, she is fidgeting with her papers. His anger evaporates, leaving a hollow in his chest. Alarms go off in his head. His emotions are becoming unstable. He should probably stop and leave while he is ahead. Typically for the day though, what he's feeling comes out anyway. "I know you did it to keep us alive."

"Yes." now she is looking at him. Her grey eyes are moist, but she isn't crying. She blinks the tears away. He can see her better now, he's getting better at reading her face. She doesn't seem to realize it's not good enough to mask her face and hide her tears anymore; her eyes betray a sea of emotions that he is looking at through a tiny window. Loss. Regret. A cavernous sadness.

He coughs and looks away; decides to let her off the hook. "What about the windows?" he says, redirecting her back to his original question.

"Well, I heard you yelling in your sleep one time, through an open window. I hadn't known that you had those," she searches for the right words, "the night terrors, too. You didn't, usually. At least...later on. After that, I noticed that you kept the windows open in your room at night at least a little bit, even in the winter. I…I was curious I guess, because of my own nightmares. I listened for you, if I was walking by. But I didn't hear you again."

"So we didn't… sleep in the same bed then." He is still having difficulty with his timelines.

"No. Not yet. That happened on the train, during the Victory Tour." She releases a sigh, her lips stretched thin, the shadow of a memory slips across her face. "You were still angry with me when we got back from the first Games. You were hurt. We didn't speak. I didn't know how to talk to you. You were so distant." Her voice cracks a little on the last word, betraying a hurt he wouldn't have guessed she had. "I didn't know how to reach you, or if I even wanted to. There was so much change in our lives, my life, it was one more thing I would have had to figure out and navigate. So I left it. And so did you."

It was an honest answer. He mulled it over, satisfied at least with the facts. "Thank you." he says. "So nothing else ever happened, on the tour. We just slept." he says.

She shakes her head, she seems shocked and a little exasperated. "No, Peeta. Nothing else happened on the tour." she pauses. "But it…you...helped me."

"So those things must have been…" he trails off. He's so confused. His mind partitions. He reverts to his earlier coping mechanism from Thirteen. It takes an awful moment to search out his memories for shininess, and he's even more confused when he doesn't find any. "That must have been what I wanted to happen. I wanted her so much. And they twisted it somehow. How did they know? Effie knew. It was a scandal. Snow must have heard about it. People were talking. They assumed it was true. They wanted me to believe that she seduced me? Used sex against me." His mutt self is about to retort that they did have sex in the Capitol, when he realizes that he's having this one sided conversation out loud, and that it was about to get two sided. Her mouth is hanging open, her eyes are wide.

"Sex? Against you?" is all she can get out. He can't tell if she's furious or self-consious or both. It's more than he can handle.

It's not like him to run, except from her right now. He's up and out the door before she can say anything else. Before he can say anything else. Before his mutt self can say anything at all. He feels insane. He calls Dr. Aurelius, but gets a Team Peeta member. It's enough to keep him from having a flashback, but not the nightmares.

One week goes by. They don't work on the book. He stays home and bakes. She disappears into the woods for days. Haymitch changes nothing at all. He starts making bread for Greasy Sae to sell or donate. Works out the fickleness of the perfect pie crust. How to balance butter and sweetness in a pastry, with just a hint of savory. And his father's specialty, cookies. He sorts through memories. Calls Delly. He even calls Johanna and Annie and Effie. Loneliness eats at him, especially at night.

Two weeks go by. She contributes meat, leaving the occasional rabbit or squirrel for him with Haymitch. They see each other occasionally, nod uncomfortably, exchange hurried polite words in passing.

Three weeks go by. They tend to Haymitch separately. But Haymitch is already tending to himself somewhat. He's acquired some geese. Peeta has no idea who would have made that sale. Maybe Effie sent them. Maybe Haymitch asked Katniss to round up some wild ones. His liquor has run out. He is insufferable, complaining about having twice the amount of annoying visitors. Peeta threatens to pay Greasy Sae to come by as well, and apparently Katniss has made similar threats.

"You two need to pick a bed and screw." Haymitch says. "I can't take both of you in stereo. I get enough noise from the geese." Peeta laughs bitterly as he ducks an empty flying bottle. It bounces against the wall in the hallway, Haymitch is a terrible shot when he's weak, and he gets to the door just in time.

"You'll get over it, Haymitch." He slams the door. He hears another bottle hit a wall and shatter this time, and some words. He can't make them out, but he guesses they were not flattering.

…

One month later.

She's standing on his front porch holding the bottle of wine out for his inspection. "Peace?" she says, her eyes darting, making only fleeting contact. She is clearly very nervous. "I know you don't drink, but I thought maybe we could have dinner? I made dinner." She shifts back and forth on her feet, her speech running slightly faster than usual. And this is an unusual gesture for her to make. It's not like her. Things must be bad. But he knows how that feels. He misses her. And he is speechless, so he just motions for her to come in. When he gets a better look at her he notices that she's carrying a basket behind her back. She takes it into the kitchen and sets it down on the table.

"The market just got a shipment of Capitol goods in on the train. Paylor has opened up the Capitol warehouses to the whole country. There were only ten bottles, and I thought I should get one. I didn't want to miss the opportunity. We haven't had any wine in…" it had been since they were in the Capitol, so she trails off, not wanting to remind him of anything that might cause an episode, he guesses. "Anyway, I had to buy a corkscrew. Haymitch didn't even have one. And he offered to finish off the bottle if we don't, by the way," she finishes, clearly running out of words and steam. Haymitch's involvement means that she went to him for advice, which she never does unless she's really hurting. Figures he'd recommend alcohol. She finally sighs heavily and confesses. "I wanted to talk to you, about our last conversation."

"Okay," he says holding out his hand. "Give it here. And the corkscrew." He could use a drink, for the first time in a very long time.

They sit down at the table and he pours them both a glass. It's just table wine, but it's better than anything they've had outside the Capitol debauchery circuit, and it's certainly better than white liquor. She doesn't say anything until she's downed half the glass.

"Easy there," he laughs, cutting the tension a little. Her nerves are suddenly amusing him greatly. "This doesn't even come close to the hardest things we've ever done."

She laughs. "I guess that's true." They pause, looking one another over, each waiting for the other to speak. When she doesn't, he goes first.

"I'm sorry, that you had to see me like that." he says. "And I'm sorry about what I said. I didn't know I was saying it...out loud."

"I understand," she says. "I really do." She's probably had many conversations with Dr. Aurelius about it, so she probably does. It's highly unusual for the same doctor to treat two patients who are so close to one another. Normally it would be considered a conflict of interest, but Aurelius pointed out that they are not the usual patients. Peeta wonders if it's not just assumed that their individual sessions might one day become or include joint ones. "It's not like I didn't know how you felt then. You were working it out. I'd just never heard you talk about me like that, or talk to yourself like that. I'm sorry you were…uncomfortable," she says. "I meant it, you know. You did help me. On the train. On the tour. It was always so much better when you were there with me."

"I know. It was better for me, too," he smiles at her. "And not just for the obvious reasons."

She returns his smile, tentatively. Neither of them are used to smiling anymore. There's a long awkward pause where she looks like she's going to say something but she doesn't.

"So, what did you bring to eat?" He asks.

"Oh! Yeah!" she exclaims, suddenly kind of beaming. "I made food!" She opens the basket and pulls out some cold roasted meat, vegetables, soft cheese and a salad. She's quiet for a long moment. "Did I ever tell you what the dandelion meant to me? The one I picked at school, after you gave me the bread?"

"No. I just assumed it was because you thought it was pretty, or you were avoiding looking at me, or both."

"Well, it started out kind of that way. I was uncomfortable looking at you because I owed you so much and I had no idea how to thank you or repay you. You saved us, literally. But that's not all of it," she holds out the salad. "Dandelion leaves are edible."

It all suddenly makes sense. Tears well up in his eyes, and he takes the salad from her.

"I didn't know that," he says. "At least I don't remember knowing it."

"My father taught me," she says quietly. "It's in our family plant book."

Her face is so soft and so open. It's a rare look he has seen before, it's one she gets when she's telling him something she guards from the world. He saw it in the cave during their first Games when she talked about Prim, but he didn't know what it meant then. He saw it right before she kissed him in the Quell. He saw it in the tunnels under the Capitol. This is her apology, this is the explanation she feels she owes him.

He hadn't bothered to turn on all the lights when they came in, she had caught him by surprise and he hadn't been thinking straight. It's taking the hard edges out of everything. That and the wine. Their hands are so close on the table that they're almost touching. He can feel how close she is to him all of a sudden. He's so afraid to push her, to make her run, that he doesn't dare reach out and close the small distance between their fingers. To take comfort in her, to give it back.

Almost as if she can read his hesitation and his reasons she closes the distance herself. Her long, strong fingers grasp his, cover them, squeeze them tightly.

"Thank you," she says. "It's a few years late, I know."

"You don't owe me anything, you know," he says. He knows this is a delicate issue for them. It's entirely possible to push her away with the wrong words. She feels her obligations so much more acutely than he does. She hates owing people, and she doesn't like the charity of a wiped debt. "Just your life and your firstborn child."

"That's all?" She laughs and takes her hand back, the moment gone. "We should eat before this wine goes to our heads."

They finish off the food. They talk some more about what they've been doing for the past month without touching on the fact that they hadn't been speaking. But both of them are aware. They finish the bottle of wine. He's feeling warm and relaxed for the first time in a very, very long time. They've moved to the living room, to the deep soft leather sofa. They never stop talking, until they're settled in and feeling drowsy; re-deposited into the world where time matters. It's late, they both realize at the same time. But neither of them wants to break this night.

This time he reaches out to her, his arm around her shoulder, pulling her to him. They wiggle around until they're comfortable and end up horizontal. She is so warm, he thinks. She's gaining more weight, filling back out and looking (and feeling, his breath catches at the thought) healthy. He hadn't let himself think about how it felt to have her next to him, even after some of his old memories became clearer. He doesn't have the right words for what it does to his heart. It's painfully full. She's quiet as she rests her head on his chest, listening to his heart, like they used to sleep. A few minutes later he realizes that she's asleep, and the next thing he knows he's waking up to the sun streaming in the window, and she's gone. A blanket has been pulled up over him. There's a note in the kitchen.

Come over later.

Is all it says.

He does. They resume their old routine like nothing happened, which includes separate beds at night. He senses she's not quite ready for that. Not yet.


	20. Under the Primroses in the Morning

Spring is long over, and he still hasn't unpacked his closets from before the Quarter Quell. He hasn't been as careful as he would like. The dust has built up in the corners and crevices, even where he is usually meticulous. It's time. He spends a whole weekend throwing open all the windows to keep from sneezing. He's going through the closets in the upstairs spare room when he finds them.

His paintings. The ones he thought were destroyed in the bombing. They're wrapped up carefully in bakery paper, with a note taped to the front.

Peeta,

I wanted you to know I found these and thought they should be kept safe. I think you forgot to take them with you when you moved.

See you for dinner this Sunday.

I love you and I'm proud of you. I'm sorry I don't say it more.

dad

He must have dropped them off at the house sometime before the Quarter Quell and forgot to tell him.

He unwraps them carefully. The first one is the town. It was his first painting. He was young, and still learning the tricks of perspective and line. The town seemed like a natural choice. A blue sky, summer trees and the bakery, from up the street.

The second is a sunset. He was learning to play with color in this one. Soft oranges and pinks and tinges of blue and green as the sun set over the umber hills in the fall.

The third he puts off looking at for awhile. He finishes his cleaning, takes a shower. Gets something to eat. He takes it downstairs and settles into the sofa to unwrap it. It was his first try at a person. He agonized over it for months and months, working out the details. Studying her during class, watching to see the things that made her her, instead of just arranging her features mathematically on the canvas. It took months alone to sketch out the angles of her face, to find the one that felt right. He only had enough paint for one painting, if that.

He unwraps it slowly, almost afraid. But there she is, her face, just like he remembers it. Every single detail, from individual brush strokes to where he got the canvas. The unquestionable focus of the painting are her grey Seam eyes. Hard and soft at the same time, guarded and complicated and quiet, with focus like a steel trap. Hunter's eyes. Her hair wisps softly around her face, gathering down one side into her braid. He had spent many nights and daydreams wondering what her hair felt like, smelled like. How it would be to feel it between his thumb and forefinger, or to dig his fingers into her braid and pull her face to his. It made his chest clutch and his stomach knot and his skin prickle just to think about it now. These were very old feelings, made new again by Snow. If there was one thing Snow never intended to give him, it was this gift. Falling for her again.

And it seemed there was one last gift his father had given him as well. He lets the tears go, and he falls into bed early that night, exhausted.

A nightmare has him hard in its grip. He's back in the Quarter Quell. He can hear her, but he can't find her. She is screaming his name, over and over. Helpless, stumbling, he screams her name back at her. He is running in the dark. Getting nowhere.

His good foot hits something sharp. Suddenly he realizes he isn't dreaming anymore. He is actually running in the dark, through his house, trying to get to her. He had fallen asleep with his prosthetic on. She is sitting on his front porch at who knows what hour, screaming his name. Holding something in her arms. He helps her up and she drifts listlessly through the open door into the house, into the kitchen.

"Katniss?" he approaches her carefully, aware that her seemingly fragile body holds unpredictable and formidable strength, will and skill that isn't visible to the naked eye.

She chokes back a sob. She stumbles. He goes to her, his hesitation burned away by instinct. To hold onto her, hold her up.

"It's Buttercup." She indicates the limp animal in her arms. If that cat is letting her hold him, something is very wrong.

She holds him out. "I don't know what to do." Her body shakes. She looks so small. She's wearing nothing but a shirt and her underwear. "He won't eat, he won't drink. I tried to make him, and just looked at me. He didn't even fight." The whites of her eyes flash in the dark, wet and enormous. "He keeps trying to hide, but I keep finding him. He was in the bushes this time. The…primroses." She says the name like it's something that might explode. "I can't look for him again. I can't..." A sob escapes her. "I haven't slept in so long…"

He turns on a lamp to inspect the cat, and her. They both jump when the telephone rings. He answers it. It's Haymitch, wanting to know if Peeta has finally decided to kill her or fuck her. "Whatever you're doing, make it quick and keep it inside," he says. "I'm trying to die an agonizingly slow death over here." The geese keep him busy during the day, but at night there is no distraction for him, and he does not do well in the dark.

"Nice, Haymitch." he says. "None of the above. It's the cat. We'll see you later. Go back to sleep. Or whatever."

"Don't kill her." Haymitch adds, and Peeta hangs up on him.

His support of her gone, she's dissolved into a pile of angular limbs and tears, her dark hair pooling in a cloud around the dying cat. Of all the things he has seen, of all the horrors of war and poverty and torture, broken, burned and mutilated bodies, cities bombed into the ground, this image is going to push him off the edge. This girl, this woman, this tribute, survivor, soldier, killer, criminal, the face of a fucking revolution, his friend and the love of his life—her heart stripped down and bared to him on a kitchen floor in the middle of the night—is finally going to break him completely. Holding her dead sister's cat, lamely professing her hatred for it. Begging it not to die.

"Peeta." She looks up at him and everything else falls away. Nothing Snow has ever said or put in his head can compete with what fills him up as he falls onto his knees and down to her. He will never be completely broken, as long as she's alive. He will never let her be completely broken. He holds her there until dawn, wrapped around her like a blanket. He wipes her tears and her nose, strokes her hair as she comforts the cat the only way she knows how. "Stupid cat," she says. "I hate you! What did you do? What did you eat? This isn't how it's supposed to happen. You walked all the way back from Thirteen." It's a statement, it's an accusation. "I thought you were going to let me cook you," she sobs. "At least let me drown you..." He holds her tight as they watch another thing she loves slip out of the world.

They bury him under the primroses in the morning.

When it's done she collapses bonelessly into him. He carries her into her house and up the stairs. She won't let go of his hand, so he climbs into bed with her.

"Stay with me." she says, her eyes not leaving his even as they want to drift off into sleep. Those words. Their words. The words she will never have to ask him again.

"Always." he replies, one hand curled around her cheek, the other still entwined with hers. They sleep with their hands clasped tightly, until it's time for dinner. If they had dreams neither of them remember them. She is on the verge of dehydration, so he makes her stay up for a few hours to drink water and try to eat. When she falls asleep on the sofa in his lap like a child, her head curled up against his chest, hugging her arms to herself, he carries her back upstairs, wraps himself around her and they sleep again all the way through the night.

The next day they spend writing Buttercup's pages into the book, and after that is complete they worked on it every day until it is as done as it can be. Haymitch helps, in the end. Twenty three years of lost tributes distracts him from his lack of liquor.

There will always be more to remember, more things to lose, more things to record as life goes on. Even good things. Like sleeping in the same bed. They don't put that in the book, of course. But they both know it's where they need to be, it's where they belong. Together.

Of course they will go into this as one.


	21. Hurricane Delly

It's mid fall when Delly arrives like a whirlwind or some other kind of natural disaster. A blond, happy, energetic hurricane. One day the phone rang and she announced she and her brother would be back in Twelve for a week, the next thing Peeta knows he's being hugged so fiercely he can't breathe.

"Hey! It's good to see you too, Delly!" he says, regaining his composure and his balance. "I'm not as good at that as I used to be, you know."

"I'm sorry Peeta! I'm just so happy to see you. You look so good!" she squeals, and then Hurricane Delly descends full force on Katniss. To Katniss's credit, she manages to both avoid killing Delly on reflex alone, and to smile at the same time.

"You both look so happy!" Delly sweeps them up and into Peeta's house like she lives there and they're her guests. "We have so much to talk about!"

Delly is not just there for fun. She's part of the Reconstruction Delegation, a committee made up of former residents, Capitol bureaucrats, architects, economists, construction experts and other various planning experts who are touring the districts. They are assessing damage, researching resources and assigning funds President Paylor has set aside for reconstruction.

Delly is only part of this delegation for this visit, as she is the former resident on the tour. She was the only former resident of Twelve who could be found who volunteered to come back and do it. There are plans to assign the houses in the Victor's Village, and there's a bit of a debate about whether or not there should be a raffle or assignment based on need. There were some large families displaced to Thirteen that simply couldn't manage coming back without the space or the availability of jobs and schools.

They're standing around in the kitchen, Peeta is making sandwiches and Katniss is getting drinks for Delly and her brother. "Peeta, have you thought about what you want to do? For work?" Delly cocks her head at him. The unspoken question is whether or not he will be rebuilding the bakery.

"Um, no. Actually. Katniss and I are just concentrating on getting better right now." He had been baking from his kitchen and donating or selling the bread and pastries and he has enjoyed that on his own terms. But he didn't really want to turn that into something he did every day and had to do every day. It would be too hard right now. Maybe at some point in the future rebuilding would be an option, but not now. Not so soon.

"Well, the things the committee are planning now are for basic government and services. Utilities and schools and basic businesses. Would you be interested in teaching art or baking or something? It wouldn't have to be a permanent position. You're so smart and you've always had such a good way with kids," she says. Delly doesn't look at Katniss when she says this, but he sneaks a sideways glance. Katniss looks down and smiles for a second, then her brows crease and she shuffles her feet on the floor. Then the clouds on her face pass, as if she has decided not to let them stay. She looks over at Cooper, who is still struggling a little with being back in Twelve. On the way from the train station he was very quiet, his eyes wide at all of the ash and rubble. "I wouldn't have brought him if I could have found anyone for him to stay with, in Thirteen," Delly had whispered to Peeta. "But I couldn't find anyone." Katniss has been watching him since the train station, a pained look slipping across her face every once in awhile. He's about twelve now. He would have been up for the reaping this year, or next. She's probably angry at Delly for bringing him back here, and reminded of Prim and Rue. Cooper was always hearty and round but the strict diet of Thirteen and the pain of loss and change have taken their toll on his robustness. He is thinner than Katniss would remember him, even from last time they were in Thirteen.

Delly ruffles her brother's hair and looks at Katniss. "How about you Katniss? Are you keeping busy?" She doesn't ask whether or not Katniss wants to work, not wanting to push the issue too hard right now. Katniss has been hunting some, but the book has taken up most of their free time until recently. Delly seems aware that she's treading on thin ice and doesn't say anything more.

"I am. Thank you, Delly. And I think Peeta would made a wonderful art teacher." She bumps him playfully with her hip, sending a hot jolt and surge straight to his groin. Ugh. As if sleeping next to her wasn't already hard enough. Hard. He smiles to himself. Jokes are rare, and he's going to enjoy even the adolescent ones he tells himself. He needs to sit down and give himself a mental cold shower. They all pull up chairs at the table.

"Can you believe we actually got lemons for lemonade, Delly?" Katniss says as she plops down into her seat after serving everyone a glass. "Isn't that cool Coop?" Delly's little brother nods approvingly and takes a sip.

"It's so sweet!" he squeals with delight. There's still not much sugar in Thirteen, even though they are supposed to be receiving Capitol surplus as well. Old habits die hard. They use it, but in very practical ways. Something as frivolous and exotic as lemonade would be a luxury to him. His obvious joy clears the rest of the clouds from Katniss's face.

"I know! Peeta gave me some sugar." Katniss winks at the boy, and then at Peeta. Again, he thinks about and then immediately has to make himself not think about 'giving' her 'sugar.' And the winking. And the dimples at the corners of her mouth when she smiles. He's going to need an actual cold shower before bed. In any case he's happy she's in a good mood.

"So Delly, what are the plans for District Twelve? Can you tell us anything?" Peeta asks.

"Well, there's been a suggestion to build a medicine factory as a main job source. Since the mines burned and since it's so dangerous anyway Paylor is looking into different sources of energy. I guess Snow had developed them but has been sitting on them all this time because—" she stops herself, her face draining of what little color it has to begin with. Her head snaps around to Katniss's face. She is not telling them something, and she is terrible at lying or keeping secrets. Her lack of tact is a heavy curse. "I'm so sorry Katniss. I'm really sorry," she seems to know that given her obvious distress they're not going to let her out of the room without an explanation. "I forgot—" she pauses and looks at her brother. "Cooper, I need you to go outside, for just a few minutes. Okay? Maybe we can get Mr. Haymitch to show you his geese! Go wait outside for me. But don't go inside Mr. Haymitch's house yet, okay? I'll be out in a few minutes." She eases him up gently at the elbow. He protests but she insists. He downs his lemonade and goes.

"It's okay Delly. What were the reasons?" Katniss's voice is deceptively calm. He knows that tone. It's dangerous.

"Because Snow needed an excuse to continue mining. He liked to use hard labor to keep people in line..." she swallows hard. "He also used mining 'accidents' for population control and—and these are not my words, I promise—for 'strategic elimination.'"

The room is suddenly so quiet he can hear every breath, every tick of the clock. Katniss has turned white. He is filled suddenly with cold, quiet rage. Then everything goes blank. When he comes to, his hands are clenched to his chair, his teeth are grinding still in his mouth. "Just when I thought I knew everything horrible about that man..." he chokes. Katniss reaches out to him and takes his hand in hers. He hasn't told her even a quarter of the terrible things he saw in the Theater, but she knows the most horrific ones. And they were all Snow's brainchildren. "How long?" he asks Katniss.

"Just a minute. Not long at all," she says reassuringly. She's holding his hand so hard her knuckles are white, even though her voice is not betraying her anger.

"I'm so sorry." Delly says. Genuine horror is written all over her face. "I didn't mean to tell you this way. It just... came up," she is obviously mentally kicking herself.

"Do you know if... if my father? Gales father?" Katniss gets out.

"Not your father," She says quietly. "Mr. Hawthorne. He and some others were planning some kind of 'rebel action.'"

"Are you supposed to be telling us this, Delly?" Peeta asks. He can't imagine that this is either common knowledge or that she is supposed to be speaking about it.

"I don't know. Probably not. I'm so sorry. But you two... you, Katniss, with everything you did to help get rid of Snow and everything you went through, because of it. You deserve to know why your father died. That it wasn't...an accident."

"Does Gale know?" Peeta asks quietly.

"He does," she nods. "He's the one who told me, actually. He was really upset and he called me out of the blue a few weeks ago. He said he didn't know who else to talk to. He didn't want to call you, Katniss. He didn't want to be the one to tell you, if anyone ever told you." Her face falls hard as she realizes that she's going to have to explain this to Gale as well. "Oh, I've made a big mess of this, haven't I? I'm so sorry." Tears are pooling in her eyes.

Katniss gets up and puts the pitcher of lemonade in the refrigerator. "I know, Delly," she says. "Stop apologizing. I'm going to go, for a little while. I'll be back for supper," she says. She touches Peeta on the shoulder and floats out the door, her eyes a million miles away.

They chat for a little while longer, maybe five minutes when Delly (who is clearly on the verge of tears) says, "You should go to her, Peeta. Cooper and I will go settle in next door and then go see Haymitch. Tell her..." she was about to say that she was sorry again, he's sure. But she thinks better of it. "I really didn't mean to tell you."

"Thank you, Delly," is all he can say. He hugs her and sees them over to the Victor's house next door, the committee is using the Village while they are visiting. Delly managed somehow to get the house next to his. He says goodbye to Cooper, who is peeking around Haymitch's house to see if he can see the geese. Being outside even for a few minutes where there isn't any reminder of destruction has brought him back to life a little more. That and the sugar, maybe. But he obviously needs to be outside, not locked underground in Thirteen. Even if they could start rebuilding above ground in Thirteen. There's no point to hiding anymore. But he has no idea what their plans are.

But if they can't make things better for the children, what point was there to the revolution? If they were just going to be punished and damaged in different ways, like keeping this child who so obviously thrives outside indoors, or ruining something he loves with horror. That second one couldn't be helped anymore, he guesses. Children of war have existed since the dawn of humanity, and they always managed to get on with life. There were no more Hunger Games and no more killing children, but wasn't breaking their spirits almost as bad? He thinks about the other children in Thirteen who have never known any other kind of life. Even the Capitol children who had lived comfortable lives only to have it all ripped out from under them. It wasn't their fault, but they were going to have to adjust. He shakes his head as he leaves them and goes to see Katniss.

He finds her curled up on top of the covers on her bed. He crawls up next to her, wrapping his arms around her waist, his face buried in her hair, which she's worn out of its usual braid today.

"Katniss? You okay?" He asks.

"No," she says, turning to face him. "How could she do that?" she sniffs. "How could she not think?"

"Come here," he says and pulls her head to his chest. "You know how she is. Things come out of her mouth sometimes. You wouldn't believe the things she would tell me when I was in treatment in Thirteen just because she wasn't thinking. Gossip, mostly. She'd slip up and then realize what she'd done and make me promise not to tell anyone. It was always pretty harmless until now. I know she didn't mean to upset you," he says. "She was just excited. She's like one of those little Capitol dogs, shaking and peeing all over. She can't help it." He catches her face in his hands and her eyes with his and keeps a hold on them. "Your father was a good man. Even my father liked him, and he had every reason not to."

"Thank you," she says. "I know he was. So was your father." She looks up at him, her eyes moist. "And Cooper... I forget, sometimes. I forget everything everyone has been through, not just me. Everything you've been through. Everything Snow did to you. Your family... the bakery... how much you lost when they... when they wiped our home off the fucking planet. I'm so sorry, Peeta." She releases a strangled sob. "It's my fault," she says, her voice tight. "It's all my fault."

"Hey, hey," he says, pulling her to him. "It's not. You know it's not. It's not your fault." Mutt Peeta speaks up in his head for the first time in awhile, but he slams a mental door in his face. "I'm okay. It was just a little episode. I didn't even break anything," he says, though he is feeling a little weak and tired and hungry. "I'm kind of disappointed. You know how much I like breaking things."

She laughs a little through her tears, letting go of her guilt for now. "You love it, I know. It's so like you to go around breaking everything all the time. Peeta smashing!" she says, kissing the sharp lined tip of his nose. Goosebumps prickle his skin. She is also stroking his arm now, so she notices. "Are you cold?"

"No," he says, a little breathless. She is so close, her lips are inches from his. She smells like the end of summer, her breath like lemonade, her skin like apples and sugar and cinnamon. It's his fault, he made cinnamon rolls for her this morning, and the apples are falling off the trees.

"What is it then?" she looks concerned, like she thinks goosebumps may be a sign of an impending episode. She is so amazingly clueless sometimes. Or she's playing. Sometimes he can't tell. He puts his hand on the small of her back and pulls her close to him, so their bodies are lined up, nose to nose all the way down to their toes touching.

"You," he says. "It's you." He leans in and kisses her, the lightest lock of his lips on hers, the slightest pull of her top lip between his. Her lips are soft and dry, and it's easy to brush in between them slowly, hold on and then slip back out with a whispery touch that sends a cascade of tingles all the way down his body. She shivers in his arms, obviously feeling the same thing. There's a line between his lips and his heart and every motion he makes tugs on it, hard. Other things are fast becoming hard as well. It only lasts a minute, though. When they're done she smiles at him and curls back down into his arms, her head tucked into the hollow between his neck and shoulder, her breath hot on his neck. "I missed your lips," he says gently, his heart swelling as he sighs into her hair. "President Snow never intended this to happen, you know. Us." He never thought that what he would actually give us would be each other, he thinks. It's so difficult when he feels like he's doing better, to have any setbacks. He hasn't had a Mutt Peeta thought in weeks, until today. And he hasn't had a Mutt episode in months. It makes him savor these moments. And after the tunnels in the Capitol, he knows that she appreciates him. What they had, what they have. What they could be.

"I know," she says. "He never intended me to happen at all."

"I'm so glad you did," he says. He nuzzles her hair, breathing her in.

"I am too, most of the time," she says. "I always am, when I'm with you."

He wants to tell her that that's the nicest thing she's ever said to him, but he just wants to hold her right now. He'll tell her later. It will be time to wage some kind of peace between Katniss and Delly and eat soon enough.

It might be nice, he thinks, to be a teacher for awhile.


	22. Moving

Delly and the Delegation have come and gone. Katniss forgave Delly, when she cried and told her how overwhelming it was, just to be Delly who never quite understood what everyone was thinking or talking about, and to be poor little Cooper's surrogate mother. She wanted so badly just to do what she could to help. And she obviously felt horrible. So Katniss moved on. She could do that, now. She and Delly had even stayed up late one night drinking and whispering and laughing like young girls. It had made him glad even when they were cackling and crying until the wee hours and he had to put a pillow over his head to sleep. It was good for her to have a friend like that. It made him wish that Johanna or Annie could visit as well. He missed them. But Annie had gone back to Four and Johanna was still in the Capitol, deciding what she wanted to do. No one was pushing her, and Dr. Aurelius wasn't letting them even try.

Haymitch was drunk for the first time in weeks (he'd received a surprise shipment of wine and Effie on the same train Delly had come in on) and threw up on the geese while he was showing them to Cooper, which was all Cooper could talk about for the rest of the trip. That and Miss Katniss, who had actually been to the woods. Miss Katniss did her best to hold back what she felt when he talked about climbing trees and chasing cats, and promised to show him the woods the next time they came to visit. Maybe they could come back to live, he said. Even though it was a little sad, he could do it, he said. Delly had smiled at that. Maybe, she said.

"I can't live here anymore." She says one morning. They're in her bed with the recently risen sun shining on them through the window. She had woken up screaming about fire and collapsing mountains and the smell of burning flesh and it had taken awhile to calm her.

He pulls away from her sharply. "What?" he manages to squeak out. All his vital organs leap up and jam into his throat. Where is she going to go? She can't leave Twelve, she'll be re-arrested and possibly executed.

"No, no, that's not what I mean." She pulls his hand back to her, holds it against her lips. "Not Twelve. In this house. I can't be in this house anymore. It's full of ghosts, and I can't make them leave. Everywhere I turn reminds me that they used to live here. Prim. Buttercup. My mother. She's out there, but she's never coming back. It's a graveyard. It's a monument." Her voice betrays the pain she doesn't know he can see in her eyes. "And Snow. He was here. More than once. He left a white rose on the nightstand before the Quell." She looks over at the furniture sadly.

"Where do you want to go?" he asks, but there is really only one real answer he can think of. "Do you want to sleep at my house?"

"Not just sleep." she teases him, having no idea what she's doing to him. He feels his longing spring up in his lap. She just leans in and brushes her lips to his, soft as a cloud. Lightning runs down his body as her fingers run down his chest through the soft hair. "Can I? Move in with you? Unless you want to help me remodel."

"What about the primroses?" He looks down at her.

"I don't want to give the house up completely." she says. "I'm sure I can find someone who wants to live here who can take care of them. Maybe Effie wants to move here to Twelve. Or at least have a clean place to stay when she's here."

He laughs. "Maybe. That would certainly make Haymitch happier. Or crazier. Or both."

"Or maybe Delly and Cooper. If they want," she exhales. "This house deserves to have some happiness in it. The ghosts won't bother anyone but me."

They start moving her things the next day.

She has only a few possessions, and the few her family left behind, so it doesn't take long.

He'd finally admitted it to himself yesterday when the conversation came up about her moving in. Admitted that something had to be said; had to be done. He wanted to not just hold her and comfort her at night, but to kiss her and be with her and love her and make her his. As long as he could. As long as he lived. He knows it's something to work towards, something that will always need work. But he is ready to start. He wants to do the work. He needs to know. He broached the subject over dinner and wine that night in his kitchen.

"Katniss…" he pauses. "Are we… I mean, are you…" he is flustered. The moment is here. Their relationship has always been dependent on her making the first real move. Sometimes he'd open the door, but she was always the one to make that leap into the dark. He waits, she leaps. He would wait forever for her if he had to, but something about the way she is looking at him, tired and full of trepidation, says that she needs him to do it. Just this once.

He finally spits it out. "Are we together? Are we working towards something? Or are we just using each other to stay sane?" Now she looks at him like she always looks at him when he says something like this. He ignores it and plows on. "We're... friends now, right? We spend most of our free time together, and our nights…" he closes his eyes, trying not to think about what he desperately wants, because his body will betray him. He might as well just get straight to the point. "I want more."

He sighs. He can see that she is in that place where she closes off and considers her options.

"I know." She says. Then she pauses. "What exactly do you want?"

The crossroads is here. The door is open. Either he waits or he leaps. He doesn't want to wait. It's his turn. For no other reason than that he wants to give everything he is to her, and to give her this one thing. She doesn't need to cut off his words or bring him back from some deep dark place. Their lives are on the line, but not in the literal way that they have been before. A singular life together is the proposition.

She is sitting back in her chair, arms crossed over her belly, wine glass in hand. She takes a sip. He takes the leap. He stands up and takes her glass, setting it carefully on the table, and then he takes her hand. He pulls her onto her feet and into his arms. The smell of her is almost the exact opposite of roses, the opposite of cloying and heavy and quick to decay. It's breezes and wood and lightning and turned earth and forever. He touches her cheek with his lips and inhales. His fingertips tip her chin up.

"To look at you, for starters." He smiles when her brow wrinkles. "Not like before. And definitely not like then," he says. Meaning that first loaded encounter back in Thirteen after he'd tried to strangle her. "I see who you are, Katniss." He runs his fingers so so lightly over the skin on her neck, some of it's still the same skin, but some if it had not been there when he hurt her. No, not him. Mutt Peeta. He kisses the old skin lightly, every mark of his lips an apology he'll never be able to voice. "I want a life with you. I see everything you are. Good, bad, everything. I'm not watching you from afar, you're not on a pedestal, you're not in danger, you're not a mutt. You're here, you're real, you're human. And I love you."

Tears are streaming down her face, and she's not even trying to hide them. "That's the first time you've ever said those words to me, you know," she says. "Even before, when I knew you did and I took it for granted, you never said it."

"I love you," he says it again. He smiles and wipes the tears from her cheek with the back of his hand as best he can and waits for a second, and then he doesn't want to anymore. They have time to say everything, he can give her time to say what she needs to. But right now his lips are on hers and he is parting them, telling her everything there are no words to say. She gives everything she has back to him, wrapping her strong limbs around him like a vise. He is hers.

He is breathless, amazed, his heart feels like it might burst with the sudden and sweet joy of her in his arms, kissing him deep and hard like she means it. He thinks now she does mean it. Mutt Katniss has no more hold on him anymore than centipedes or mysterious ocean beasts or falling off of something high or any other irrational fear. The weightlessness of that realization makes his head spin and he wraps his arms around her so tightly she squeaks a little and smiles into his lips before diving in further, more. He feels the hunger he's always had for her returned back to him in a way that he can only remember feeling once or twice, but this is so much more. Her sureness and her complete lack of hesitation lift everything. Their need is one need. Every touch feeds it and at the same time demands more.

She is Katniss, she is fire. Alive and blazing. He tends her heat with is steadiness. Contains it, holds it. Keeps it safe. Grows and thrives and tempers in her heat. Their lips meld; they melt into one another, every touch stokes the fire. Every stroke of his tongue, every movement of his hands is returned with a squeeze of her thighs around his hips, her calves digging into the small of his back. He can feel the feverish wet flame between her legs and his body responds with hardness like stone. Her hand twists in the soft curls at the top of his neck, giving her the leverage to take what she needs from him with her tongue and her lips. His knees threaten to buckle, and he reaches for the table behind him for support. She understands and unwraps herself from him, ghosting her lips with her fingertips as she feels the loss of his touch, with her other hand taking his and leading him.

It's her turn now.


	23. Threshold

They stumble to the stairs, shedding clothing and inhibition and doubt between feverish kisses and breathless exclamations. She unbuttons and discards his shirt and then hers, her lips work his chest and her hands tug at his waist as she walks backwards. Her teeth nip at his stomach and ribs, she leaves a track of tiny kisses down to the waistband of his pants. Her eyes are closed as she feels him out with her mouth, inhales him, trusting him to not let her trip or fall over. They make it to the stairs. He grabs her around the waist and leans her down onto the first few steps. She is biting her lip in anticipation as her fingers work the buttons of his pants impatiently. She laughs, delighted with her accomplishment as he springs free. She stares for a moment, her eyes wide. Hungry. He is gratified, no one has ever looked at him before like this, straight on, so close. Then she raises those grey eyes to meet his, licks her lips and takes the tip of him into her mouth just a little, wrapping her wet lips around him, sucking gently. She's not even using her tongue and it's a ridiculously delicious sensation. He's not able to handle too much of that yet, his knees want to collapse and his hips want to buck. Though he won't, he wants to throw his head back and thrust himself into her mouth, it feels so good. So he kneels and leans in and pulls her bra up over her head. Before he can get a good look at her she takes his hands, turns and places them on her hips as she starts to scramble gleefully up the stairs.

His fingers grip the waistband of her pants, and she lets him use her movement to remove them and her underwear in one motion as she climbs. One look at what's between her legs, now swollen and covered with a wispy blur of dark hair, and he is harder than he has ever been before, aching for her. He groans and squeezes himself quickly, while she is not looking. He sheds the rest of his clothing and follows, his eyes not leaving her body for even a second. He memorizes the way her hips move, the way her feet pad soundlessly across the floor as if she's tracking in the forest, the way her hair falls loose making a vee that ends just between her shoulder blades, the way her eyes shine and smolder as she pauses to look at him as they enter his bedroom. Their bedroom. They reach this bed for the first time completely bare. They're acquainted with one others' bodies, but those were their old bodies. They sleep together, but there hasn't been any room between the nightmares, the episodes and the exhaustion to move into this familiar but uncharted territory. Nothing is keeping them from it now. She climbs up onto her knees on the bed and he can just make out the slightest blush in her cheeks in the moonlight coming through his window. He can see her hands crossed over her chest self-consciously, the light coming through her legs which are parted just enough to make him crazy.

He stops to commit this scene to memory; to paint a mental picture.

"What?" she asks, when she knows the answer. She knows what he will say. But she is still that Katniss, the one from the elevator in the Capitol, the one who wouldn't look at him naked even when he was dying.

He climbs up onto the bed with her, behind her. He holds her around her own arms, reassures her with the steadiness of his hands. He whispers heated words into her hair, into her ear; the things he loves, the things he wants. He feels her shudder under his palms. She lets her arms fall and he holds her breasts finally, feeling their weight, pulling them gently back and up and into his hands as he rests his forehead on the back of her head for balance, careful not to touch her yet with his erection. She pushes her hips back, looking for it, but he pulls back further, his hands flatten on her chest, crushing against her as she hits against his stomach. She loses her balance and falls onto all fours. She looks back at him, her back arched, scowling. He grins. It's another one of many images from this night that etch themselves into his heart. This is what she is. Beautiful, vulnerable, strong. Open only to him.

She turns, looking him up and down (it's only fair), pushing his hands down her back to occupy a different set of curves. She takes his shaft in both her hands shyly, her touch as light as a whisper at first, her lips on his lips echoing her hands, keeping the same rhythm and pressure. He takes it for as long as he can before he takes her waist and tips her onto her back, intending to take his time over every inch of her. He begins with her fingertips and ends with her toes. His lips and hands trace her scars, stimulating every piece of skin that has a nerve, tracing muscle and bone under the skin with his tongue. He skips the obvious destinations, the marks of her sex, and concentrates on the parts their bodies have in common. She voices her encouragement with sounds she's never made before; sounds that surprise both of them.

When he's done with the tips of her toes, he puts his hands on the inside of her calves and slides them up slowly, all the way. His thumbs rest in the crook of her thighs, his strong fingers splayed, curled around her hips. He slides his hands down her inner thighs, opening and raising her legs. Fuck, she's beautiful. He can't help himself, he stares for awhile, then he maps the landscape with his hands, using his fingers to spread her open, to explore. To see all of her. These are the landmarks that he thinks about in quiet moments when he lets himself, the ones he longs to taste again. That moment is finally here and he means to savor it. He wants to make her scream and squirm until she can't do anything but let go.

And she does. He takes his time. Writes her a love letter with his tongue. He spells it out, then he punctuates it with his fingers. He pushes in and down, then up and around, experimenting, growing more and more confident when she cries out for more. He gives it to her. She arches completely off the bed into his hands and his mouth, climbing him, her legs over his back. They go suddenly stiff, and she shakes in his hands. After she bucks a few times, she goes limp and he sets her back down, rubbing her thighs. She is still for a minute, catching her breath.

"Where did you learn to do that?" She eyes him semi-suspiciously.

"I don't know, I just... did it? Also my brothers were kind of crass and specific." He lays down next to her and pecks her on the cheek.

"Lets not talk about them." She says.

"Okay." He grins. "What would you like to talk about?"

"I don't." She says. "I think my mouth is about to be full. Lay down." She hovers over him, one hand to either side of his chest, her legs straddling his thighs. She kisses his forehead, his nose, his mouth, then works her way down. She can feel his hardness brush against her body, getting firmer the closer she gets. As she grazes his bellybutton with her lips, she stops and hugs his penis between her breasts. He throws his head back and utters a prayer to something. She's never heard a prayer before, so she stops there for awhile, nipping at the skin below his waist with her teeth. She lets the silky skin of the underside of his erection slip along the middle of her chest as she rocks up and down; fluid leaks onto her skin, marking it, making it slippery as he feels the full round weight and pressure of her breasts against the sides, curving over the top. It's maddening for him.

She lowers her head until he can't see what she's doing, her face obscured by a curtain of dark wavy hair. But he definitely feels it when she takes him into her mouth; he wants to see it as well but he can deal with the lack of visual if it's all going to feel like this. She slides her tongue up and down, taking his head into her mouth occasionally, making him forget how to breathe, wanting to scream her name but not remembering how to speak. Sounds come out of him, but they're not words. She pulls her hair back and looks at him, keeps her eyes on his while she pushes him into her mouth as far as he'll go, until she gags a little and pulls back.

Her eyes are still on his face as she sucks lightly and pulls her head up, tugging gently on his skin, running her tongue along the underside, lingering and circling where he gasps. The friction is perfect, her pace is perfect, her face is perfect, and her eyes are making him want to explode right there in her mouth. That thought sucks a rush of blood from his brain, rendering him completely speechless. He's thinking about nothing, which isn't working. He's close to coming and he doesn't want to yet. He puts his hand in her hair, gently, then runs it down the side of her jaw, pulling up. She seems to understand, she lets him slip out of her mouth, but she's still holding him firmly in her hand, and he is going to lose it.

"Please." He manages. "I want...I need to be inside of you."

This makes her smile, and he relaxes a little. "Okay," she says.

But before that he has a question he has to ask. "What about...babies?" he stammers.

"Don't worry, they gave me a shot. It lasts two years," she looks impatient and clearly does not want to talk about it. He's fine with that.

She straddles him and leans forward to kiss him, their musk mingling in each other's mouths before she reaches down and guides him to her. He pushes into her as she pushes onto him, they connect and lock together. She rides him, testing different rhythms and motions, back and forth or up and down, swirling around or balanced on her feet. She settles into something that makes him say her name again and again and again. "I love you," he says. She answers with a kiss that pulls deep on his heart; like she wants to suck it out and own it. He's so very close to the edge.

"Katniss... You're going to make me..." he tries to speak.

She quiets him with the intensity of her lips on his, to tell him she knows. And she doesn't stop until he swells and bursts inside of her.

This night for them is a dance for control; to take it and to let go of it. They lose control of themselves, of each other, of what they feel, taking and giving, giving and taking what they've needed for so long. They spend years of unspoken, unacknowledged desires and wishes in one night. Not all of them, but enough. They break free, they are two halves that make a whole.

When they're finished and she is in his arms, drowsy and naked and lovely, he needs an answer to the last question he has.

"You love me, real or not real?" he asks.

"Real." She tells him. And finally, not a shred of doubt remains.


	24. Fight

She still has trouble accepting affection. But so does he. She'll walk up behind him and snake her arms around his waist or even put a hand on his shoulder and he'll startle. To be fair she can be alarmingly quiet. She tries to make noise but instinct and years of training is hard to overcome. Sometimes he'll reach for her mouth with his and she'll turn her cheek to him instead. When their mutual need syncs up they use any available surface to leverage their hips together. Sometimes she only wants him to close his arms around her and keep her until morning. He always wants that.

One very bad night he comes to in the middle of a scream, on his knees on the bed, Katniss with her back pressed against the headboard, the word mutt leaving his mouth without his consent or any explanation. After she and sees the horror seizing his face, she releases a sob that seems like it should shatter her whole body she pulls his head to her chest and hears his apology over and over. She knows he has to say the words. She holds his head and she wipes the tears from his cheeks. "It's alright, sweetheart," she says, and her reflexive use of Haymitch's endearment (the only one she knows, the only one she hears since her father died, he'll have to fix that) destroys what's left of him. Leaves him a pile of raw nerves and bones loosely held together inside his skin with sinew and willpower. He spends the rest of the night in her arms. It happens sometimes. "Peeta," she whispers as she pulls him back from wherever he's been. "Not real, Peeta." He feels her lithe arms wrap around him like steel cable, her frame radiating steady fire as she presses up against his back, not big enough to cover all of him but enough to protect and hold what's important. Slowly he melts back together.

They have worked out a routine, after all the months, for the mutt episodes. She pulls him back, however she can. Sometimes if she's desperate, she sings and he can't help but fly back to her. When it's over, she tells him what he said because he can't stand not knowing, he promises not to apologize again, she promises not to lie or leave things out. They happen less and less. He still hates the pain in her eyes, the looks he finds on her face when his awareness blinks back on. Once he was smashing dishes, shards flying, glass embedded in his feet and legs, blood smearing on the floor. She was perched calmly on the countertop as if she were on a tree limb, waiting for his rage to subside. Watching him as if he were something wild. Then she helped him pick the glass up off the floor and out of his skin, wrapped his cuts and curled into his arms like a child, trusting, unwilling to let the madness win. They fight the madness like they fought the darkness. Together. But he hates that she can forgive him. He knows it's hard for her. But she does it. He hates that she can turn herself off and recount the words he said with administrative accuracy, her voice cold and distant. He understands, he just hates it.


	25. epilogue

5 years later

The sun over the lake wakes them at dawn. It's the anniversary of the day he came back to 12. They're still wrapped around each other, like they probably always will be. The light hits them and reflects unevenly on the their matte skin, the shiny scar tissue. His fingers trace the lines along her body.

"I saw it happen, Katniss." He says. They've never spoken about how they got these scars. She is silent. "I saw you. I didn't see Prim. But I saw you. I was right there. Right behind you. Looking out for you. I couldn't stop myself."

"You had my back." She whispers. There are very few people she would trust with that position. Gale used to be one of them, he knows. Finnick. Boggs. Jackson. All gone.

"Yes." He says. "Always."

They spend the morning absorbed in each other, their bodies weaving a new story, like they have for the last five years. Fresh, sun kissed memories that are nothing but joy and each other. They're joined now. Their lives have been since he tossed her that bread, since they stepped onto the podium at the Reaping what seems like a lifetime ago. But now they are truly connected. One unit. Part of a community. When they get hungry they dress and she fishes while he forages for bulbs and then watches her, trying to memorize that moment. He'll paint it later.

It's never easy for them. Bad days, lost tempers; lost days and bad tempers. But they always push through. They always come out the other side. He never asks her to marry him. She never wanted to get married anyway. The whole concept was destroyed for them by their fake engagement, by Snow and the old Capitol. It suits them fine, and no one cares. One night they make toast by the fire. Make intentions clear, make promises to one another that could be described as vows but they never use that word. They don't have any desire to bring any more government into their lives than they have to, however benevolent. He wants children, but he is patient. There is plenty of time. The rest of their lives. He's still plagued by flashbacks, she by night terrors. They still talk to Dr. Aurelius occasionally. They will never be the same as they were before. But they forge a life for themselves anyway, and it's a good one.

20 years later

They're kneeling on the bed in the middle of a bad night, hands clasped, her heart frantic and still somewhere back in her nightmare. Their children are asleep, the house quiet, and a middle aged Sir Buttercup the Second (or Burrcup Two, as the little boy calls him) is on guard duty at the end of the bed. "Things never get easier, do they?" She says. It's not really a question, just a statement of fact. "They just get different." She pauses, her eyes fixed on the pattern of the sheets. "Do you miss her? The girl from the Reaping who got on that train to the Capitol with you?" She looks at him, challenging him. But behind the bravado is real fear and she can't hide it from him anymore, he knows where to look.

He doesn't hesitate. "No. I loved her, but I didn't really know her. Besides, we match now." His fingers find the scars on her neck. "Everything we've gone through is where I learned to love you," he taps her chest. "The real you. And our children are happy, and safe. They'll be the things that we could have been if we hadn't been born into the same world we were. We don't have to miss those people we were. We're here." His words are gentle. They begin to unwind some of her worry, slow her heart beat. "I wouldn't mind having my leg back, though. I do miss that." He's joking, mostly.

"I don't want to damage them with our damage." She chokes out. No doubt remembering her mother, paralyzed with grief, her children starving in front of her eyes.

"Shhhh." he squeezes her hands. "We won't." He says. "What we did, we did for them, so they could exist. You know that better than anyone. History has to be remembered, to learn from. We can't protect them from it. We can't let it happen again. But we can make them strong. It's still horrifying. It should be. We can hold them when they get scared. They'll be here, with us, they'll know they're protected. We'll tell them how we've always protected each other. And we have the book. We can tell them what war does to people." His voice lowers to almost a whisper. His hands on hers are strong, warm, and steady. They are the old Peeta's hands, with new Peeta's wisdom and scars. His eyes bore into hers, seek the place where two survivors take refuge in each other. "What it did to us." His lips meet hers so softly it reaches down fathoms deep into her heart where the lost boy and girl live. They're just an echo of a memory now, and this is realer and deeper than anything they ever knew then. He cups her face between his hands and touches his forehead to hers, meeting her eyes again.

"It's never going to be easy. Ever. Just like it never is for us." He says. The steady warmth of him that was so hard and took so long to reclaim burns away tonight's pain. "But it will be okay." He whispers. And for that moment, she knows it's true.


End file.
